The Swallows of Coulter Brook

Birds are nesting everywhere already. Swallows love to make nest in eaves of barns and around human shelters.  We have to keep them away from one of our garden sheds which has a large gabled porch because they cause a huge mess with the mud and nesting materials that they collect to build their nests in the eave of the porch.

However, we have a family of swallows that comes back to nest every year in a birdhouse that sits on a pole elevated above one of our large round vegetable beds. They have been nesting there for the last 4 years.  It's very early this year but as we were weeding and prepping the bed we noticed that there were a couple of swallows swooping and diving near us.  We thought they might be fighting but it turns out that they have already laid their eggs almost 2 months earlier then normal. They were upset with us because we were weeding below the birdhouse.  I caught one of them sitting on top of the ring of the rooftop of the birdhouse.