92 BIRDS 



Female — Smaller and paler, with shorter outer tail feathers, 



making the fork less prominent. 

 Range — Throughout North America. Winters in tropics 



of both Americas. 

 Migrations — ^April. September. Summer resident. 



(See plates, pages 82-83.) 



Happily, the beautiful barn swallow is too familiar to 

 need description. Wheeling about our barns and houses, 

 skimming over the fields, flashing in the sunlight, playing 

 "cross tag" with its friends at evening, when the insects, 

 too, are on the wing, gyrating, darting, and gliding through 

 the air, it is no more possible to adequately describe the 

 exquisite grace of a swallow's flight than the ghstening buff 

 of its breast. The deep fork in his tail enables him to steer 

 himself with those marvellously quick, erratic turns, which 

 make his course through the air resemble forked lightning. 

 But with what exquisite grace he can also glide and skim 

 across the water, fields, and meadows without an apparent 

 movement of the wing! His flight seems the very poetry 

 of motion. The ease of it accounts for the very wide dis- 

 tribution of barn swallows from southern Brazil in winter 

 to Greenland and Alaska in summer. What a journey to 

 take twice a year! But it is as easy for them, perhaps, as 

 is the full-fed millionaire's annual flitting to Palm Beach. 



High up on some beam, too high for the children to reach 

 let us hope, a pair of barn swallows will plaster their 

 mud cradle. Perhaps the only time one can ever catch 

 them with their feet on the earth is when they are gather- 

 ing pellets of wet soil in their bills at some roadside puddle. 

 Each mud pill must be carried to the barn and fastened 

 on to the rafter. Countless trips are made to the puddle 



