276 THE BARN SWALLOW. 



defection is unquestionably due to the presence of the English Sparrows; and 

 the unlucky farmer now has to support a gibbering swarm of grain-eating 

 birds, where before he enjoyed the gratuitous services of a graceful host of 

 insect-destroyers. 



No. 121. 

 BARN SWALLOW. 



A. O. U. No. 613. Hirundo erythrogaster Uodd. 



Description. — Adult: Above lustrous steel-blue; in front an imperfect col- 

 lar of the same hue; forehead chestnut; lores black; throat and breast rufous; 

 the remaining under parts, including lining of wings, more or less tinged with 

 the same, according to age and season; wings and tail blackish, with purplish 

 or greenish reflections; tail deeply forked, the outer pair of feathers being from 

 one to two inches longer, and the rest graduated ; white blotches on inner webs 

 (except on middle pair) follow the bifurcation. Immature: Forehead and 

 throat paler ; duller or brownish above ; lateral tail-feathers not so long. Length 

 about 7.00 (177.8); wing 4.75 (120.6); tail 3.00-4.50 ( 76.2-1 14.3 ) ; bill from 

 nostril .24 (6.1). 



Recognition Marks. — Aerial habit ; rufous of throat and under parts ; forked 

 tail ; nest inside the barn. 



Nest, a neat bracket or half-bowl of mud, luxuriously lined with grass and 

 feathers, and cemented to a beam of barn or bridge. Eggs, 3-6, of variable shape, 

 — oval or elongated ; white or pinkish white and spotted with cinnamon or umber. 

 \v. size, .76 x .55 (19.3 x 14.). 



General Range. — North America at large. Perhaps the most widely and 

 generally distributed of any American bird. Winters in Central and South 

 America. 



Range in Ohio. — Of universal distribution. Not so plentiful as formerly. 



IT takes six sorts of Swallows to make an Ohio summer, but we call that 

 day spring when the pleasant twitterings of the Barn Swallows are to be heard 

 in the land. The airy voyageurs have come many a league this morning, but 

 they have time to peep into the old nests, and to make the empty rafters ring 

 once or twice with their merry tisic, tisic. before they are out again to skim 

 the meadows for an early breakfast. The very poetry of motion is theirs as 

 they ply up and down above the clover tops, or rise at a thought to take an 

 insect high in the air. See them, too, above the village horse-pond, skurrying 

 after the nimble flies, now dipping into the water and just parting its surface. 

 and now steeple lengths aloft, floating and fleeing in "higher plane curves" of 

 flight. Surely all Swallows are graceful, but he of the forked tail is unsur- 

 passed. 



