(_Chelidon erythrogaster_) Swallow family
(Illustration facing p. 110)
_Length_--6.5 to 7 inches. A trifle larger than the English
sparrow. Apparently considerably larger, because of its wide
wing-spread.
_Male_--Glistening steel-blue shading to black above. Chin,
breast, and underneath bright chestnut-brown and brilliant
buff that glistens in the sunlight. A partial collar of
steel-blue. Tail very deeply forked and slender.
_Female_--Smaller and paler, with shorter outer tail feathers,
making the fork less prominent.
_Range_--Throughout North America. Winters in tropics of both
Americas.
_Migrations_--April. September. Summer resident.
Any one who attempts to describe the coloring of a bird's plumage
knows how inadequate words are to convey a just idea of the delicacy,
richness, and brilliancy of the living tints. But, happily, the
beautiful barn swallow is too familiar to need description. Wheeling
about our barns and houses, skimming over the fields, its bright sides
flashing in the sunlight, playing "cross tag" with its friends at
evening, when the insects, too, are on the wing, gyrating, darting,
and gliding through the air, it is no more possible to adequately
describe the exquisite grace of a swallow's flight than the glistening
buff of its breast.
This is a typical bird of the air, as an oriole is of the trees and a
sparrow of the ground. Though the swallow may often be seen perching
on a telegraph wire, suddenly it darts off as if it had received a
shock of electricity, and we see the bird in its true element.
While this swallow is peculiarly American, it is often confounded with
its European cousin _Hirundo rustica_ in noted ornithologies.
Up in the rafters of the barn, or in the arch of an old bridge that
spans a stream, these swallows build their bracket-like nests of clay
or mud pellets intermixed with straw. Here the noisy little broods
pick their way out of the white eggs curiously spotted with brown and
lilac that were all too familiar in the marauding days of our
childhood.