Barn swallows

Another bird painting!    There are so many beautiful birds around this spring, that I can't help but to be inspired to paint them.  I have to be honest though, swallows are not at the top of my list for favorite birds, but they seemed to go well with the little willow branches that I wanted to paint.

While out in Idaho, one spring we woke up to what felt like a swarm of barn swallows that were building nests in our unfinished soffets to our house.    My husband went outside with a broom and tried to scare them away, but this didn't work.  They are persistent little birds and kept building there messy, muddy little nests.   We bought one of those plastic owls with the little bobble head to scare them away and  this actually worked. 
Fortunately, this motivated my husband to get the soffets finished and that took care of the problem for good. 

The tree swallow doesn't rank too high on my list either.  We built about 10 blue bird houses while living out in Idaho.  Our house was out in the meadows and we had the mountain blue bird and the western blue bird.  Well, those tree swallows ended up nesting in 9 out of 10 of those blue bird houses, they would end up chasing the blue birds away.  Every year we would hope for more blue birds, but the swallows always won.

All that aside, they are amazing little fliers as they swoop and dive as they catch insects in the air.  Their little warble is nice and cheerful too.