Bird calls

[Diane Hofstetter]

For about five years now our house has been home to the returning swallows 
each year.  They come in early summer and start building their nests (last 
year there were about 150 nests!) with a single piece of mud.  Gradually the 
nests get larger and begin to take shape.  More and more swallows arive and 
build their homes too.  In the early evening they "swarm" (swallow?) and if 
you go outside, you feel almost like you are inside a fish tank (sans water) 
with all the movement happening around you. It's wonderful! Then the little 
ones begin to hatch and the adults hunt all day. People come from all over 
the area to watch them.

Only problem: they are dirty birds.  If I clean my doorstep and someone 
comes in an hour later, they comment how dirty it is!  some complain they 
need an umbrella to get into our place.  Our neighbors, who live in the 
upstairs of the house, have arranged to have barricades installed so next 
year they won't have any place to build on our house :-(

Diane

----Original Message Follows----
From: JIMRPT@AOL.COM
Reply-To: pianotech@ptg.org
To: pianotech@ptg.org
Subject: Re:  Re: Bird calls
Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 20:41:33 EST

There is a cell phone tower behind my shop....... the only thing between the
tower and my shop is a small parking lot about 60 feet wide.   I really
fussed about the darned thing going there but this thread makes me remember
that strange things come from things we do not care for...sometimes!! :-)
  This is one of those ocassions as near the top of the tower, about 80 feet
high, there is a wire mesh platfom for walking while working on the 
antennaes
arrayed around the thingee. On this platform a family of Red Tailed hawks
have built a nest and apparently have some younguns up there. Every day for
the past week or so I have seen the parent birds flying to the nest with
various and sundry creatures, snakes, fish, etc.  Beautiful sight to see a
hawk flying with a fish with the fish turned long ways so that it doesn't
offer too much wind resistance I suppose?  Very diligent and proud parents 
as
well as tremendous fliers.  There is a large population of mourning dove
around my shop but as yet I haven't seen any of them taken as prey. I can
tell the difference in the two parents by their calls as one is pitched
higher, kinda like G and G#, than the other but I can't tell which is which
vis a vis male/female.
Jim Bryant (FL)

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