THE BARN SWALLOW 



northern Arkansas and North Carolina. They do 

 not breed in the southeastern part of the United 

 States. They winter in South America. 



MOST beautiful of all the swallows is this bluebird 

 fleet of the summer time. It is associated in 

 my mind with shining pools rimmed with iris; with fra- 

 grant lilac-bushes, blossoming apple-trees, and waving 

 fields of grain near farm-buildings. Its sweet voice and 

 marvelous flight bring poetry into the prosaic life of the 

 farm. 



Burroughs characterizes the swallow delightfully in 

 "Under the Maples." He says: "Is not the swallow one 

 of the oldest and dearest of birds? Known to the poets 

 and sages and prophets of all peoples! So infantile, so 

 helpless and awkward upon the earth, so graceful and 

 masterful on the wing, the child and darling of the sum- 

 mer air, reaping its invisible harvest in the fields of space 

 as if it dined on sunbeams, touching no earthly food, 

 drinking and bathing and mating on the wing, swiftly, 

 tirelessly coursing the long day through, a thought on 

 wings, a lyric in the shape of a bird! Only in the free 

 fields of the summer air could it have got that steel-blue 

 of the wings and that warm tan of the breast. Of course 

 I refer to the bam swallow. The cliff swallow seems less 

 a child of the sky and sun, probably because its sheen 

 and glow are less, and its shape and motions less arrowy. 

 More varied in color, its hues yet lack the intensity, and 

 its flight the swiftness, of those of its brother of the hay- 

 lofts. The tree swallows and the bank swallows are pleas- 

 ing, but they are much more local and restricted in their 

 ranges than the barn-frequenters. As a farm boy I did 

 not know them at all, but the barn swallows the summer 



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