72 THE SECOND BOOK OF BIRDS 
that birds have some sort of language. The 
swallows have many different notes. One is a 
general warning of danger, but there is another 
note for a man, another for a cat, and a still 
different one when they find something good to 
eat, which they call the others to share. 
“The variety of bird speech,” says a man who 
has studied birds a long time, “is very great.” 
And of all bird voices, swallows’ are the most 
like human speech. If you lie on the hay in the 
barn very quiet, and listen to them when they 
come in and fly about, you will see that this is 
true. It seems sometimes as if you could almost 
make out words. 
Swallows more than any other birds like to 
make use of our buildings for their own homes. 
Barn swallows take the beams inside the barns, 
EAvE Swatuows settle under the eaves outside, 
and PurrLe Martins, the largest of the family, 
choose bird-houses which we put up for them. 
It is said that purple martins will not stay 
anywhere that men have not made houses for 
them. But I have seen them living in a place 
not put up for them, though perhaps they 
thought it was. It was under a terra-cotta cover- 
ing to a cornice on a business block in the mid- 
dle of a busy city. The terra-cotta was shaped 
