(_Progne subis_) Swallow family
(Illustration facing p. 44)
_Length_--7 to 8 inches. Two or three inches smaller than the
robin.
_Male_--Rich glossy black with bluish and purple reflections;
duller black on wings and tail. Wings rather longer than the
tail, which is forked.
_Female_--More brownish and mottled; grayish below.
_Range_--Peculiar to America. Penetrates from Arctic Circle to
South America.
_Migrations_--Late April. Early September. Summer resident.
In old-fashioned gardens, set on a pole over which honeysuckle and
roses climbed from a bed where China pinks, phlox, sweet Williams, and
hollyhocks crowded each other below, martin boxes used always to be
seen with a pair of these large, beautiful swallows circling overhead.
But now, alas! the boxes, where set up at all, are quickly monopolized
by the English sparrow, a bird that the martin, courageous as a
kingbird in attacking crows and hawks, tolerates as a neighbor only
when it must.
Bradford Torrey tells of seeing quantities of long-necked squashes
dangling from poles about the negro cabins all through the South. One
day he asked an old colored man what these squashes were for.
"Why, deh is martins' boxes," said Uncle Remus. "No danger of hawks
carryin' off de chickens so long as de martins am around."
The Indians, too, have always had a special liking for this bird. They
often lined a hollowed-out gourd with bits of bark and fastened it in
the crotch of their tent poles to invite its friendship. The Mohegan
Indians have called it "the bird that never rests"--a name better
suited to the tireless barn swallow, Dr. Abbott thinks.
Wasps, beetles, and all manner of injurious garden insects constitute
its diet--another reason for its universal popularity. It is simple
enough to distinguish the martins from the other swallows by their
larger size and iridescent dark coat, not to mention their song, which
is very soft and sweet, like musical laughter, rippling up through the
throat.