THE SWALLOWS
Purple Martin
Barn Swallow
Cliff Swallow
Bank Swallow
Tree Swallow
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THE SWALLOWS
If you were a bird, could you think of any way of earning a living
more delightful than sailing about in the air all day, playing
cross-tag on the wing with your companions, skimming low across the
meadows, ponds and marshes, or rising high above them and darting
hither and thither wherever you pleased, without knowing what it means
to feel tired? Swallows are as much in their element when in the air
as fish are in water; but don't imagine they are there simply for fun.
Their long, blade-like wings, which cut the air with such easy, but
powerful strokes, propel them enormous distances before they have
collected enough mosquitoes, gnats and other little gauzy-winged
insects to supply such great energy and satisfy their hunger. With
mouth widely gaping, leaving an opening in the front of their broad
heads that stretches from ear to ear, they get a tremendous draught
down their little throats, but they gather in a dinner piece-meal just
as the chimney swift, whip-poor-will and night-hawk do. Viscid saliva
in the bird's mouth glues the little victims as fast as if they were
caught on sticky fly-paper; then, when {94} enough have been trapped
to make a pellet, the swallow swallows them in a ball, although one
swallow does not make a dinner, any more than one swallow makes a
summer.
These sociable birds delight to live in companies, even during the
nesting season when most feathered couples, however glad to flock at
other times, prefer to be alone. As soon as the young birds can take
wing, one family party unites with another, one colony with another,
until often enormous numbers assemble in the marshes in August and
September. You see them strung like beads along the telegraph wires,
perched on the fences, circling over the meadows and ponds, zigzagging
across the sky. Millions of swallows have been noted in some of these
autumnal flocks. Usually they go to sleep among the reeds and grasses
in a favourite marsh where the bands return year after year; but some
prefer trees. Comparatively little perching is done except at night,
for swallows' feet are very small and weak.
At sunrise, the birds scatter in small bands to pick up on the wing
the long continued meal, which lasts till late in the afternoon. Those
who have gone too far abroad and must travel back to the roost after
sundown shoot across the sky with incredible swiftness lest darkness
overtake them. Relying upon their speed of flight to carry them beyond
the reach of {95} enemies, they migrate boldly by daylight instead of
at night as the timid little vireos and warblers do. During every day
the swallows are with us they must consume billions and trillions of
blood-sucking insects that would pester other animals beside
ourselves. Think of the mosquito bites alone that they prevent! Every
one of us is greatly in their debt.
Male and female swallows are dressed so nearly alike that you can
scarcely tell one from the other. Both twitter merrily but neither
really sings.
THE PURPLE MARTIN
There is a picturesque old inn beside a post road in New Jersey with a
five-storied martin house set up on a pole above its quaint swinging
sign. For over thirty years a record was kept on the pole showing the
dates of the coming and going of the martins in April and September,
which did not vary by more than two or three days during all that
time. The inn-keeper locked up in his safe every night the registers
on which were entered the arrivals and departures of his human guests,
but he valued far more the record of his bird visitors which
interested everybody who stopped at his inn.
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One day, while he was away, a man who was painting a fence for him
thought he would surprise him by freshening up the old, weather-beaten
pole. Alas! He painted over every precious mark. You may be sure the
surprise recoiled upon him like a boomerang when the wrathful
inn-keeper returned. However, the martins continue to come back to
their old home year after year and rear their broods on little heaps
of leaves in every room in the house, which is the cheerful fact of
the story.
These glossy, blue-black iridescent swallows, grayish white
underneath, the largest of their graceful tribe, have always been
great favourites. Even the Indians in the Southern States used to hang
gourds for them to nest in about their camps--a practice continued by
the Negroes around their cabins to this day. Strangely enough these
birds which nested and slept in hollow trees before the coming of the
white men, were among the first to take advantage of his presence.
Now, in the Eastern United States, at least, the pampered darlings of
luxury positively refuse to live where people do not put up houses for
their comfort. In the sparsely settled West, however, they still
condescend to live in trees, but only when they must, like the
chimney-swifts, who, by the way are no relation. Plenty of people
persist in calling them chimney swallows, which is precisely what they
are not. Not even the little house wren has adapted itself so quickly
to civilised men's homes, as the swift and purple martin.
[Illustration]
Young barn swallows cradled under the rafters.
[Illustration]
Baby barn swallows learning to walk a plank.
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Intelligent people, who are only just beginning to realise what birds
do for us and how very much more they might be induced to do, are
putting up boxes for the martins, not only near their own houses, that
the birds may rid the air of mosquitoes, but in their gardens and
orchards that incalculable numbers of injurious pests in the winged
stage may be destroyed. When martins return to us in spring from
Central and South America, where they have passed the winter, insects
are just beginning to fly, and if they can be captured then, before
they have a chance to lay their eggs, you see how much trouble and
money are saved for the farmers by their tireless allies, the
swallows. Unfortunately, purple martins are not so common at the North
as they were before the coming of those saucy little immigrants, the
English sparrows, who take possession, by fair means or by foul, of
every house that they can find. In the South, where the martins are
still very numerous, a peach grower I know has set up in his orchard
rows of poles, with a house on each, either for them or for bluebirds.
He says these bird partners are of inestimable value in keeping his
fruit trees free from insects.
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The curculio, one of the worst enemies every fruit grower has to
fight, destroying as it does millions of dollars worth of crops every
year, is practically unknown in that Georgia planter's orchard. Some
day farmers all over the United States will wake up and copy his good
idea.
A colony of martins circling about a house give it a delightful
home-like air. Their very soft, sweet conversation with one another as
they fly, sounds like rippling, musical laughter.
THE BARN SWALLOW
Do you know where there is an old-fashioned, weather-worn barn, with
its hospitable doors standing open, where you could not find at least
one pair of barn swallows at home beneath its roof? These birds, you
will notice, prefer dilapidated old farm buildings, whose doors are
off their hinges, and whose loose shingles or broken clapboards offer
plenty of entrances and exits. If you like to play around a barn as
well as every child I know, you must be already acquainted with the
exquisite, dark steel-blue swallows with glistening reddish buff
breasts, and deeply forked tails, that dart and glide in and out of
the openings, merrily twittering as they fly. While you tumble about
in the {99} hay among the rafters the swallows go and come, so that,
quite unconsciously, you will associate them with happy hours as long
as you live.
High up on some beam, too high for the children to reach, let us hope,
a pair of barn swallows will plaster their mud cradle. Did you ever
see them gathering pellets of wet soil in their bills at some roadside
puddle? It is, perhaps, the only time you can ever catch them with
their feet on the earth. Each mud pill must be carried to the barn and
fastened on to the rafter. Countless trips are made to the puddle
before a sufficient number of pellets are worked into the deep mud
walls of the ample nursery. Usually grass is mixed with the mud, but
some swallows make their bricks without straw. A lining of fine hay
and plenty of feathers from the chicken yard seem to be essential for
their comfort, which is a pity, because almost always chicken feathers
are infested with lice, and lice kill more young birds than we like to
think about. When there is a nestful of fledglings to feed, sticky
little pellets of insects, caught on the wing, are carried to them by
both parents from daylight to dusk. Do notice how tirelessly they
work!
In a family famous for graceful, rapid flight, the barn swallow easily
excels all his relations. The deep fork in his tail enables him to
steer {100} himself with those marvellously quick, erratic turns,
which make his course through the air resemble forked lightning. But
with what exquisite grace he can also glide and skim across the water,
fields and meadows without an apparent movement of the wing! His
flight seems the very poetry of motion. The ease of it accounts for
the very wide distribution of barn swallows from southern Brazil in
winter to Greenland and Alaska in summer. What a journey to take twice
a year!
THE EAVE OR CLIFF SWALLOW
More than any other bird family, the swallows are becoming
increasingly dependent for shelter upon man, at least when they are
nesting; and as this is the season when they are most valuable to him
because of the enormous numbers of insects they prevent from
multiplying, let us hope that familiarity with us will never breed
contempt and cause them to return to their old, uncivilised building
sites. In the sparsely settled West, the cliff swallow still fastens
its queer, gourd-shaped, mud nest against projecting rocks, but in the
East it is so quick to take advantage of the eaves of the barns and
other out-buildings, that its old name does not apply, and we know it
here only as an eave swallow.
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The barn swallow, as we have seen, chooses to nest upon the rafters
inside the barn, but the eave swallow is content to stay outside under
the shelter of a projecting roof. In such a place you find not one,
but several or many mud tenements plastered in a row against the wall,
for eave swallows are always remarkably sociable, even at the nesting
season. A photograph of a colony I have seen shows one hundred and
fifteen nests nearly all of which touch one another.
Although so often noticed circling about barns, you may know by the
rusty patch on the lower part of his steel-blue back, the
crescent-shaped white mark on his forehead, and the notched, not
deeply forked tail, that the eave swallow is not the barn swallow,
which it otherwise resembles.
THE BANK SWALLOW
_Called also: Sand Martin; Sand Swallow_
Perhaps you have seen a sand bank somewhere, probably near a river or
pond, where the side of the bank was filled with holes as if a small
cannon had been trained against it as a target. In and out of the
holes fly the smallest of the swallows, with no lovely metallic blue
or glistening buff in their dull {102} plumage, which is plain
brownish gray above, white underneath, with a grayish band across the
breast. Only their cousin, the rough-winged swallow, whose breast is
brownish gray, is so plainly dressed.
The giggling twitter of the bank swallows as they wheel and dart
through the air above you, proves that they are never too busy hunting
for a dinner to speak a cheerful word to their friends. Year after
year a colony will return to a favourite bank, whose face has been
honey-combed with such care. Think of the labour and patience required
for so small a bird to dig a tunnel two feet deep, more or less! Some
nests have been placed as far as four feet from the entrance. You are
not surprised at the big kingfisher, who also tunnels a hole in a bank
for his family, because his long, strong bill makes digging
comparatively easy; but for the small-billed, weak-footed swallow, the
work must be difficult indeed. What a pity they cannot hire moles to
make the tunnels with their strong, flat, spade-like feet. No wonder
the birds become attached to the tunnels that have cost so much
labour. When there are no longer any baby swallows on the heaps of
twigs, grass and feathers at the end of them, the birds use them as
resting places by day as well as by night until it is time to gather
in vast flocks and speed away to the tropics.
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THE TREE SWALLOW
_Called also: White-breasted Swallow_
Probably this is the most abundant swallow that we have; certainly
countless numbers assemble every year in the Long Island and Jersey
marshes, perch on the telegraph wires and skim, with much circling,
above the meadows and streams in a perfect ecstasy of flight. At a
little distance the bird appears to be black above and white below,
but as he suddenly wheels past, you see that his coat is a lustrous
dark steel green. Immature birds are brownish gray. All have white
breasts.
As the tree swallows are the only members of their family who spend
the winter in the Southeastern United States, they can easily arrive
at the North some time before their relatives from the tropics
overtake them. And they are the last to leave. Myriads remain in the
vicinity of New York until the middle of October. There is plenty of
time to rear two broods, which accounts for the great size of the
flocks. By the Fourth of July the young of the first broods are off
hunting for little gauzy-winged insects over the low lands; and about
a month later the parents join their flock, bringing with them more
youngsters than you could count. They sleep every night in the
marshes, clinging to the reeds.
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Like the cliff swallow, the tree swallow is fast losing the right to
its name. It takes so kindly to the boxes we set up for martins,
bluebirds and wrens that, where sparrows do not interfere, it now
prefers them to the hollow trees, which once were its only shelter.
But some tree swallows still cling to old-fashioned ways and at least
rest in hollow trees and stumps, even if they do not nest in them.
Some day they may become as dependent upon us as the martins and, like
them, refuse to nest where boxes are not provided.
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