There is no need for panic. We haven’t personally been attacked. But our swallows have.

We have 7 nests around the courtyard. A majority of them are in a covered pass through which we never have open.

Two more are over in front of the horse stalls and what will someday be the wine cellar.

This nest above is currently unoccupied and the nest below has 2-3 babies in it.

When we started cleaning out the house last August, we had swallows living in most of the nests. They created quite a bit of waste and we kept telling ourselves we would take down a few of the nests before the birds came back after winter. In the meantime we found out that swallows are starting to become a bit of a protected bird here because their natural habits are starting to disappear. They generally build their nests on farms and around agricultural areas and use dirt and straw from the animal stalls to construct their nests. More and more farms are disappearing because it is not an easy way for people to make a living and the younger generations don’t want to take over the family farms. So we decided that as long as the birds kept to themselves and didn’t start attacking us or the dog, we should be able to coexist without any trouble. Sure they make a lot of mess but what can you do?

I think 3-4 nests are currently occupied and I knew we had babies in at least 2-3 nests. I had seen them in the occupied nest by the wine cellar as well as seen some of the egg shells on the ground under several other nests.

This morning I was out in the back of the courtyard cleaning up after the dog and I saw a dead baby bird on the ground. In fact there were about 7 or 8 total. I’m not really sure how long they have been there. We haven’t been back there since Tuesday or Wednesday I guess and we really have no clue what might have happened. I really don’t think the dog could have had anything to do with it since the nests are at least 10 feet off the ground. I guess it could have just been an accident and their first flying lesson went horribly wrong…but that just seems a bit strange with so many swallows becoming casualties.

About a week and a half ago Ayla cornered a marten here in the courtyard. They’re similar to weasels and ferrets and are actually omnivores, preying on birds, their eggs and other small animals but also eat fruit, nuts and plant matter. They supposedly can climb trees very well and are known around here to cause trouble when they climb under the hoods of cars for warmth and start eating cables. Below is the marten which Ayla wanted a piece out of.

When the marten incident occurred, we thought it might have something to do with the birds and the babies. And perhaps Ayla was really furious about it being there because it was attacking her birds…but I’m not sure I want to give her that much credit and think it was probably just the fact that it was “playing” with her that she enjoyed.

Stefan’s dad told us that martens generally hate dogs and we should be very surprised if they happened to come back. We guesstimated that the marten which invaded before was probably rather young and perhaps was on a scouting mission. We don’t think the previous owners had a dog so this may have been a marten goldmine at one point with a fresh supply of swallows every year. I still wonder how the martens might be able to climb up there but the nests are all on wooden beams and if the marten can climb a tree perhaps its claws are sharp enough to climb up the house beams as well.

At any rate I guess we need to keep an eye out for the last set of babies now. They seem to be nearly adult size now so perhaps they will be moving to a new safer location soon. I’m really shocked about the attack and wonder if Ayla’s recent spells of craziness might have been related…but again, that’s probably just giving her powers of sensitivity far too much credit. She’s never really been that “in tune” in the past. But she did go careful explore where I had cleaned up the bird remains so maybe she will be a bit calmer now.