Getting home from Canada last night, the first thing we needed to do was go out and water, as a couple of our plants (one of the maple shrubs and the crab tree) seemed to be looking a little under the weather due to the hot, dry weather we've been having.

Second on our agenda was to do our weekly monitoring of the swallow house.  Being out of town meant that we were half a week late, and I suspected that based on previous timing that we could possibly have baby swallows.  As I was walking toward the house, I made some clicking to let the swallows know I was approaching their nest so they could leave if they wanted to.  Well, as it turns out, there were no adult swallows in the nest, but having heard and seen me approaching, they quickly returned to the area and started flying around in an attempt to chase us off.  The first attempt to monitor was aborted, but as soon as the swallows left, we again resumed our attempt.  And it paid off.  Upon opening the house, I saw that the eggs had indeed hatched, and inside were several tiny, featherless baby birds that still hadn't opened their eyes yet, so they must have been born not too long ago.  I didn't want to disturb them to verify that there were seven, but since that's how many eggs there were, I assume there were that many babies.  After snapping a few pictures, the house was closed back up, and the adult swallows wasted no time flying back into their home to make sure their babies were still ok.