How we benefit by conserving the Blue Swallow e-zine:

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The Blue Swallow is an ambassador for a vital South African ecosystem namely grasslands. The South African grasslands form the major portion of our water catchment areas. More than 60% of the Grassland Biome has already been modified – forestry and agriculture playing largest roles. In South Africa only 2,23% of the Grassland Biome is formally conserved. The Grassland Biome is the least conserved, most transformed and therefore most highly threatened of South Africa’s 7 biomes.
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No Tree Swallows, all Bluebirds

braw.org Gary Gaard, BRAW Board of Directors I’ve had a bluebird trail at Deer Valley Golf Course for several years. I monitor ten flyGuard houses on the course. Cavity nesters at this golf course have been victim of the black fly.* When I first placed bluebird houses on this golf course, 50% of nests were […]

Extremely rare bird has lit in southeastern Arkansas

Swallow-tail kites found nesting in the White River National Wildlife Refuge thenewsstar.com Arkansas Game and Fish Commission sports@thenewsstar.com A multi-year research project offers hope that an extremely rare bird may find a new home territory in Arkansas. And this is not the heralded ivory-billed woodpecker. It’s the swallow-tail kite. That’s a raptor, a bird of […]

Cliff Swallows

sacto-ucc.org by Bruce Swinehart No story of Spring would be complete without mention of the return of the swallows. This romanticized event is familiar to almost everyone. The swallow most often referred to is the cliff swallow, Petrochelidon pyrrhonota. This sparrow-sized bird has the characteristically pointed wings of the swallow but is the only swallow […]

[Purification and chemical study of a Collocalia glycoprotein]

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov [Article in French] Houdret N, Lhermitte M, Degand P, Roussel P. A glycoprotein was purified from the aqueous extract of “edible bird’s nest” (Collocalia) using free flow preparative electrophoresis and represented the main fraction of Collocalia glycoproteins. This glycoprotein is homogeneous upon agarose electrophoresis and slightly polydisperse upon ultracentrifugation (S So 20w = 3,0). […]

Swallow Bird Cleanup

swallowbirdcleanup.net Abolish will professionally and humanely cleanup any Swallow mess. Whether it is an old nest, feces problem, or preventing the swallows from coming back! All products and services are environmentally safe, harmless to birds and blend in with structures. Discreet installations can be designed to be virtually undetectable from ground level and difficult access […]

Potentiation of mitogenic response by extracts of the swiftlet's (Collocalia) nest.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov Ng MH, Chan KH, Kong YC. The edible bird’s nest extract from Collocalia spp. was found to contain a glycoprotein which could potentiate mitogenic response of human peripheral blood monocytes to stimulation with Concanavalin A or Phytohemagglutinin A. The potentiating effect of the extract was most marked at suboptimal mitogenic concentrations of these lectins, […]

The Automatic Mechanical Recording of The Nesting Habits of Birds


By L. Gurr, Department of Zoology, University of Otago.

Nesting, because it is one of the most conspicuous aspects of bird behaviour, has received attention from the very earliest days of bird watching, and a good deal of literature is available on the subject. The information about nesting behaviour which is wanting, however, is of the type of observation that is continuous for twenty-four hours in the day. No individual would be capable of sustaining a watch of this type on any nest for any length of time, and accuracy on any sustained effort of this nature would suffer, due to fatigue on the part of the observer. R. E. Moreau(4) working on the nesting activities of the White Rumped Swift in Africa, came very near to a solution of the problem by employing relays of African observers to watch the nest and record the comings and goings of the birds. This type of observation is effective during daylight only, and thus has its limitations.
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4,8-anhydro-N-acetylneuraminic acid. Isolation from edible bird's nest and structure determination.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov Pozsgay V, Jennings H, Kasper DL. A new, sialic-acid-derived compound was isolated from the acid hydrolysate of edible bird’s nest by ion-exchange chromatography. Combined use of mass spectroscopy and 1H- and 13C-NMR spectroscopy established that it is the 4,8-anhydro derivative of N-acetylneuraminic acid and that in solutions it exists in two tautomeric forms. The […]