(_Tacbycineta bicolor_) Swallow family
_Called also_: WHITE-BELLIED SWALLOW
(Illustration facing p. 171)
_Length_--5 to 6 inches. A little shorter than the English
sparrow, but apparently much larger because of its wide
wing-spread.
_Male_--Lustrous dark steel-green above; darker and shading
into black on wings and tail, which is forked. Under parts
soft white.
_Female_--Duller than male.
_Range_--North America, from Hudson Bay to Panama.
_Migrations_--End of March. September or later. Summer resident.
"The stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times: and the
turtle and the crane and the swallow observe the time of their
coming."--Jeremiah, viii. 7.
The earliest of the family to appear in the spring, the tree swallow
comes skimming over the freshly ploughed fields with a wide sweep of
the wings, in what appears to be a perfect ecstasy of flight. More shy
of the haunts of man, and less gregarious than its cousins, it is
usually to be seen during migration flying low over the marshes,
ponds, and streams with a few chosen friends, keeping up an incessant
warbling twitter while performing their bewildering and tireless
evolutions as they catch their food on the wing. Their white breasts
flash in the sunlight, and it is only when they dart near you, and
skim close along the surface of the water, that you discover their
backs to be not black, but rich, dark green, glossy to iridescence.
It is probable that these birds keep near the waterways because their
favorite insects and wax-berries are more plentiful in such places;
but this peculiarity has led many people to the absurd belief that
the tree swallow buries itself under the mud of ponds in winter in a
state of hibernation. No bird's breathing apparatus is made to operate
under mud.
In unsettled districts these swallows nest in hollow trees, hence
their name; but with that laziness that forms a part of the degeneracy
of civilization, they now gladly accept the boxes about men's homes
set up for the martins. Thousands of these beautiful birds have been
shot on the Long Island marshes and sold to New York epicures for
snipe.
[Illustration: WHITE-THROATED SPARROW]
[Illustration: TREE SWALLOW]