350 BARN SWALLOW. 
secure to them the affection of all friends of nature, and the sympathy of even the most 
indifferent people. It is not surprising, therefore, that they are favorites everywhere in 
the country, and that people everywhere encourage them to remain and become 
domesticated. 
Although distributed over an immense territory, the Barn Swallow does not occur 
everywhere with equal regularity and frequency. In the East it is more numerous than 
in California and Oregon. In the North we find it a much more frequent and familiar 
summer resident than in many parts of the South. In Wisconsin it is an exceedingly 
abundant bird, and three to six, and even ten pairs, may be found breeding peacefully 
in close proximity to each other in one barn. During my residence in Oak Park, Ill., I 
frequently observed these birds in the neighborhood. In south-western Missouri they 
breed usually in the gables of churches, houses, barns, and other buildings; in some 
parts of Texas I found them also well represented, while in the eastern and south- 
eastern parts of that State they were exceedingly scarce. They spend their winters in 
the West Indies, Central and South America. The same birds that raised their young 
under the roofs of our barns, may be seen in winter flying around magnificent palms 
and other tropical trees, or over streams, where the Victoria regia and Victoria Randi 
is at home. 
Before the settlement of our country by the Europeans, our Barn Swallow made 
the projecting cliffs and rocks, little holes and crevasses in the perpendicular faces of 
banks near streams and like localities their breeding places. ‘In the case of this Swal- 
low,” says Dr. Coues, ‘““whose name is a ‘household word’ alike with the learned and 
the ignorant of ornithology, it is unnecessary to rehearse the items which have formed 
staples of biography since Wilson wrote truly that the light of heaven itself, the sky, 
the trees, or any common objects of nature, are not better known than the Swallows. 
We welcome their first appearance with delight, as the faithful harbingers of flowery 
spring and ruddy summer; and when, after a long, frost-bound, and boisterous winter, 
we hear it announced, that ‘the Swallows are come,’ what a train of charming ideas 
are associated with the simple tidings! But almost all the written history of the bird 
has the savor of home; we think of Swallows and the city street, the farm yard, the 
bursting barn, the new-mown hay, the flocks and herds, and all the changes of the 
seasons that come to us when comfortably housed—forgetting, perhaps, the trackless 
waste of the West, where Swallows are still as wild and primitive as any birds, 
bounden by no human ties, and no associates of civilization. Let us see the Swallow 
as he was before there were houses in this country—as he still remains in some parts 
of the world: we shall find him living in caverns, like the primitive cave-dwellers of our 
race; in holes in the ground like the foxes of Scripture; in hollow trees, like the 
hamadryads of mythology—so lowly is the habitation of this winged messenger of the 
changeful seasons. And yet, no sooner does the sound of the woodsman’s axe in the 
clearing foretell the new day, than the twitter of the Swallow responds like an echo, 
and the glad bird hastens to fold his wings beneath the sheltering roof.” 
Prof. Robert Ridgway found the Barn Swallow most abundant about Pyramid 
Lake, Nevada, where it nested among the tufa-domes, each nest being attached to the 
ceiling of a cave among the rocks, and each cave having generally but a single pair, 
