Oh I shivered just looking at her !!! My heart breaks for the animals in this extreme cold. We were at 2 F yesterday, which in my 28 years is the coldest I have ever been exposed to ... horrible bitter chill that hits your bones and stays with you all day ... brrrrrrr. Speaking of chubby birds ... here is one of my three warming herself in front of the spectrum light ... indoors, of course. Miss Nicholas Taylor (named prior to my finding out she was a ... she) loves to eat any and everything that has a hint of carbs in it. Takes after Dad. :) Thanks so much for sharing the great shot Nista, hope you have a feeder out there to help keep her warm. :) Ludi

Just a follow-up note... the barn swallows departed in August, I think around the 15th. They were there one day and suddenly gone the next. I was sad to see them go, I don't even enjoy being able to close the barn door again. It was a very hard year on the colony, perhaps does not bode well for their return. Many if not all of the hatchlings died. Most seemed to have fallen victim to our cats, a fact that I resent bitterly as I am not the cat lover in the family. Another pair I found drowned in the horse trough, for which again, I felt a certain level of culpability. Their presence was nonetheless a delight. We felt included in their morning gatherings as they swooped around the barn and chicken coop feasting on the abundant insect population. I appreciated their company as they followed me on the tractor through the pasture. If you don't have barn swallows on your property, I encourage you to work on attracting a colony. They have tremendous personality and are a source of real joy in the garden.

Gibby, there are RARE instances of TRES having a 2nd brood. I had a brood of 4 TRES that fledged and within a week or two another nest was started in the SAME box AGAIN wtih 4 eggs! They are now all hatched but still very young. However, I have so many TRES around here (sometimes 4 - 7) in a flock around my boxes. With bluebirds they are more territorial and seem to lay fewer eggs so there are (unfortunately) less of them than TRES. That's why I encourage others to pair their boxes or take them down if all you have is TRES. It's only doing more harm than good and the purpose behind our boxes is to increase bluebird population, Not necessarily TRES. TRES face the same problems but somehow there are many more of them than bluebirds. Yes, you should clean that nest out. With any successful fledge you want to remove an old nest. But TRES are so much messier than the blues and I mix some Clorox with water and spray down the usually-tarry walls. I find this not necessary with the blues. Sorry you missed it! I've never been able to witness TRES fledge. But I have seen blues almost every season take their 1st flight.

As I wrote in my post, my reference was to domestic cats, not to feral or barn cats who live their lives without being fed or receiving immunizations, deworming, external parasite prevention, and other routine veterinary care. I have precise first hand knowledge of what species my cats have killed over the past 40+ years and a good idea of how many of each because they bring their quarry home to my front porch and, being well fed, only occasionally do they eat one of their game animals. I could probably count on my fingers the number of birds my cats have killed over the past decades, and among these were a few English sparrows. I would say that on average 6 to 11 baby barn swallows have fledged from nests on our front porch and eaves of the barn each year, despite the presence of our cat(s.) The parent bird who fell victim this year is the only swallow killed by one of our cats ever, so I'd say that the survival rate is highly stacked in favor of the swallows. (Seven on average x 40 some years is a large sum of swallows that have come into being on my felines' terrain.) Toxoplasma gondii only poses a threat to developing fetuses and those with severely compromised immune systems. It is important that pregnant women avoid contact with litter boxes. Other than this caution, the risks posted on the inflammatory website you posted are highly exaggerated. As I also stated, this is a moot point since my current kitty has only perhaps another year of going outdoors and I do not intend to replace her when she is gone. We will have to agree to disagree on this point.