Equine Bug Control - Got Barn Swallows?

Bugs really bug horses, they bug people and pets too. Some bugs we need, some we don't. I don't like the use of chemicals to limit the bugs, so I really appreciate the job Barn Swallows  do in controlling insect population around our barn and yard.

It  all started when a solitary pair showed up a number of years ago. Now we have a full barn with the main aisle resembling the flight deck of a battleship. It is small inconvenience to have these masters of air in our lives each spring, the wonderful job they do in bug control really valuable. This season a full 12 nests of babies have hatched and taken flight.

We have plenty, but Swallows are having a tough time and populations are dwindling. Click here to check out Mass Audubon's  research project - If you are in Massachusetts you can help them with the research.
 http://www.massaudubon.org/Birds_and_Birding/birdstowatch/bigbarnstudy/

 The Big Barn Study hopes  to find answers and that will help keep the bugs from bugging you!

For bird identification and high quality photos and info check out  Cornell Lab of Ornithology site at:
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/barn_swallow/id

an earlier blog for horse lovers:
http://carolynstearnsstoryteller.blogspot.com/2012/06/wild-horses-couldnt-keep-me-away.html

Barn Guests - The Barn Swallows

Carolyn Stearns Storyteller hosts some Barn Guests,  The Barn Swallows

The Barn Swallows arrive each spring, they come with the warm breeze and the first bugs.  Swallows are voracious bug eaters sweeping over the pastures for the  unlucky flies and mosquitoes. For this reason they were a welcome guest the first year they arrived. We had lived here for a number of years without swallows, then one day they found the little horse barn with a steady supply of juicy meals flying about.

The day the babies take their first flight is amazing. Like our own children one minute they are tiny and the next minute they are gone!  I could hear the parent Barn Swallows giving instructions as the babies took to soaring along the horse pasture. Don't get so close...Slow down it's your first flight...who taught you to fly like that...don't leave the neighborhood...be home before dark...remember your manners! Then they were off and away somewhere between green earth and blue sky.  In the barn four more nests await the day of flight. We have several generations living with us now and five nests at the same time is a new record. It makes walking down the barn aisle a little like flying a kite on a runway at Chicago's O'Hare airport. There is a lot of traffic, "stall cleaner 1 to air traffic control are we cleared to take the wheelbarrow out the door?"