Feathered Friday - Water Birds & Summer Visitors

It's summertime here in South Africa, quite a busy breeding time for many of our feathered friends with the abundance of food around - from flowers, insects, seeds and fruit. Other factors are the longer days which gives them more time to forage for food and of course when it's summertime on the other side of the world in the Northern hemisphere there's more water sources with melting ice.

Today I will share with you some of our water birds as well as a migrating bird which makes its home right here on my doorstep as my contribution towards @keithboone's #FeatheredFriday Challenge.

Mommy Egyptian Goose out for a walk with her little Goslings on the water's edge. These birds were considered sacred by the ancient Egyptians and appeared in much of their artwork. Ducks and Geese all belong to the Swan family Anatidae.

Much quacking and cackling going on here as this Mallard wants to disturb the peace.

One lonely black bird (a duck or a goose?) reminds me of that old Beatles song:

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise

A much larger family enjoying a walk in the park.

A predator flying high above, a threat to the little ones perhaps?

And we're off to the warm Indian Ocean, Sea Gull surveying the waters as it's close to feeding time.

Our friend the talented artist Peter Wink, was so inspired by our visit down at Port Edward on the Kwazulu Natal South Coast, that he painted this for us from the photo above.

I'll end off with our summer migrating birds, the Swallows that have a Summer Pad right here at our home. Many generations have been coming annually for their Summer stay.

A strong nest of mud pellets which gets renovated all the time as can be seen by the different colors in the nest. We hear the little chicks chirping away at times, shouting for food, and have sadly found a little dead bird on occasions, but that fortunately is rare.

The wiring seen on the base is our telephone wire - we paint around this nest, safe-guarding our feathered friends' little Summer pad for the next breeding season.

Edit to my post as many have asked about the swallow nest
The nest at our entrance is at least 30 years old, apparently there are nests that are even as old as 45 years! The swallows renovate them rather than rebuilding as it takes a long time to build and it would waste too much precious breeding time.
I was quite amused at the little tidbit below about the attractive male birds, priceless!

Source

What’s so special about the scruffy-looking mud-and-saliva cups that swallows plaster to beams and walls? The answer, says Robinson, is that the construction takes a lot of effort, requiring an average of 1,300 trips to gather enough pellets of material. Moreover, in her classic 2006 monograph The Barn Swallow, Angela Turner cites a Danish study that found males typically do around a quarter of the work, with the most attractive, longest-tailed individuals being the least helpful to their mates.
As a result, it’s well worth returning to last year’s nest rather than starting afresh, especially if you’re a female that has just flown 10,000km from Africa and is now using up valuable fat reserves to form a clutch of four or five eggs. A good nest may be reused for 10–15 years by a series of different pairs.

Large flocks gather on the overhead power lines waiting to feast on insects, quite a sight watching them swoop down at high speed when flying ants emerge from the ground.

Thank you so very much to @keithboone for introducing #featheredfriday, a great way to share our love of the feathered species.

Please note I'm a bird lover, not an expert, so will appreciate your help if I incorrectly name one of our feathered friends.

Original Content by @lizelle

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