SWALLOWS. 
HAirundinidz. 
familiar, happy, and innocent than the SwaLLows. In the country, 
and even in villages and small towns, they frequently breed under 
, his roof and in boxes especially supplied for them. With sorrow 
and sadness he sees them depart in the late summer, and with 
joy and hope he cheers their arrival in the spring, when the days 
become mild and balmy and the leaf and flower buds are opening. In his 
“Birds of the Colorado Valley” (p. 364—405), Dr. Elliott Coues gives 
such an excellent family sketch of these birds, that I would deem this work 
incomplete, should I neglect to quote at least a part of it. Regarding the 
migration of Swallows he says: 
“Being insectivorous birds that take their prey on the wing, Swallows 
necessarily migrate through the cold and temperate zones of the northern 
hemisphere. Their recession from the North is urged as well by the 
delicacy of their organization and their susceptibility to cold as by the 
periodical failure of the sources of their food supply. The prowess of their pinion is 
equal to the emergency of the longest journeys—no birds whatsoever fly better or 
farther than some of the Swallows do; and their movements are pre-eminent in the 
qualities of ease, of speed, and of regularity. These facts are matters of common 
knowledge; the comings of Swallows have passed into proverb, and their leave takings 
been rehearsed in folk lore among the signs of the waning times. Swallows have long 
been held for weather prophets; and with reason enough in the quick response of their 
organization to the influence of atmospheric changes. Swallows have figured in augury; 
their appearance has been noted among auspicia; and truly their flight is barometric, 
for they soar on clear warm days, and skim the surface of the ground in heavy falling 
weather, perhaps neither always nor entirely in the wake of winged insects on which 
they prey. These mercurial birds are also thermometric; they are gauges of temperature, 
if less precise than the column of the fluid metal itself. It takes but a few warm days, 
42 
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