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Tree Swallow (Tachycineta bicolor)

Tree Swallow (Tachycineta bicolor) ... https://all-creatures.org/art/mackay-244.html

Tree Swallows are also one of the most reliable users of nesting boxes, and have benefitted greatly from the conservation-motivated craze for placing nest boxes for the Eastern Bluebird (Sialia sialis) throughout rural North America.

Tree Swallows winter as far north as the U.S. eastern seaboard, and not surprisingly where I live in southern Ontario they are often the first swallow species seen in spring. In this little life-sized oil painting I’ve shown an adult with a young bird begging for the crane fly in her beak.
There are usually about five eggs laid in the nest hole, but clutch size ranges from two to eight. While both sexes, when fully mature, have glossy iridescent backs that may look quite blue at times, and at other times a dark, oily green, the young are drab greyish-brown on the back, lacking the iridescence. An adult weighs about 17 to 25.5 g (0.60 to 0.90 oz).

Chicks don’t all hatch at the exact same time so if there is a food shortage females can focus on the strongest and biggest (the first hatched) to increase the odds of at least some success at producing the next generation.

Snakes, raccoons and other nest predators may consume eggs or young Tree Swallows, but one very odd risk comes in the form of a delightful little brown bird with a cheerfully distinctive song, called the Northern House Wren (Troglodytes aedon). Like both the Eastern Bluebird and the Tree Swallow, the Northern House Wren nests in cavities and they also cannot make their own. They are notorious for taking over the nests of either the swallows or the bluebirds, destroying the eggs they find. They often build several fake “dummy nests” so one pair of wrens may destroy several clutches of swallow eggs, since the swallows often nest in rather loosely formed small colonies, if enough nest sites are available. Bluebirds are larger than the wrens but are unable to defend their eggs against the wrens.

Three years ago it was estimated that there were about 190,000,000 million Northern House Wrens compared to some 23,000,000 Eastern Bluebirds, and only about 19,000,000 Tree Swallows, although of the three species I see far more swallows than the other two! Fortunately, the wrens prefer thickets and overgrown hedgerows while swallows and bluebirds will nest in more open areas, with boxes placed on fence posts in open meadows often being utilized. All three species are fully protected in the U.S. and Canada by federal legislation.

This painting is in oils on compressed hardboard and is about 12 by 9 inches.

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