Gone for materials...

Welcome swallows are master builders - their wattle and daub nests can often be seen hanging in the most precarious of positions, up high at a building's eaves. When you think about it and the differing scales involved, it would be like us putting up a 2m metre bivvy one hundred stories up and then using it as a nursery. Mother nature eh?

This shot was taken with the late evening westerly sky as its backdrop, with one of our resident swallows having a rest on our telephone line before it made its way up to the construction site above our bedroom window. They've been busy; it's taken them two days to build half the nest from scratch. My money is on it being completed before the weekend. I'm keeping an eye on progress, sometimes leaning slightly out of the bedroom window to check under the roof apex (don't worry, we have stays on the windows!)

I think some of Christchurch's local construction contractors could take a few lessons from our resident swallow family...

Go large for a building inspection