THE TREE SWALLOW 



By MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT 



Cfje jftational ^association of &uoubon &otittit& 



EDUCATIONAL LEAFLET NO. 33 



"She is here, she is here, the Swallow! 

 Fair seasons bringing, fair years to follow! 

 Her belly is white, 

 Her back black as night." 



—Greek Swallow Song. J. A. Symonds, Trans. 



This bird, known also as the White-bellied Swallow, may be easily distin- 

 guished from his brethren by his dark back, lustrous with glints of metallic 

 blue and green, and his pure white under-parts that extend quite up to the bill; 

 a white marking so precise that the dark head marking, at a short distance, 

 looks like a cap pulled low. The tail is bluntly forked, while the sharp-pointed 

 wings exceed it in length, — this being very noticeable when the bird is at rest 

 upon the wayside telegraph wires — his favorite post of vantage. 



If the sight of the Barn Swallow arranging his stucco-work home on the raft- 

 ers is one of the signs of coming summer in the real country, so the April return 

 of the Tree Swallow is one of the first authentic signs of spring; for, being an 

 insect eater, it cannot live until winged insect life abounds. The Phoebe, also 

 a. feeder upon winged insects, comes in March, it is true, but locating as it does 

 about barnyards and outbuildings, where manure is stored, it is more sure of its 

 food-supply than the Tree Swallow, who naturally belongs to the remoter region 

 of wooded pond edges, where the frost lingers. 



Time was when the Tree Swallow was evenly distributed through its range, 

 which extends in the northeast as far as Alaska, and could be found nesting 

 in the major part of it, but now it has become much localized as a summer 

 resident, on account of the difficulty of finding suitable nesting places. Like 

 the Bluebirds and Woodpeckers, this Swallow's natural home 

 His Home is a tree-hole, and, as land comes under cultivation, the hollow 

 trees quickly disappear, except in swampy regions where the 

 inaccessibility as well as the half-rotten condition of the timber has saved it. 



In many places, the Tree Swallow, like the Purple Martin, will adapt 

 itself to a bird-box, artificial hollow in a post, or even a hollow gourd, such as 

 may be found in the south, suspended for the Martins. But, unlike this latter 

 bird, or the Barn Swallow, the Tree Swallow does not seem to be gregarious, 

 to any great extent, in the nesting season. The coming of the English Sparrow 

 has been as disastrous to the semi-domesticated Tree Swallow as to the Martins 

 and Bluebirds; so that those who clung to their old haunts and adapted them- 



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