GREEN, GREENISH GRAY, OLIVE, AND 
YELLOWISH OLIVE BIRDS 
Tree Swallow 
(Tachycineta bicolor) Swallow family 
Called also: WHITE-BELLIED SWALLOW 
Length—5 to 6 inches. A little shorter than the English sparrow, 
but apparently much larger because of its wide wing-spread. 
Made—Lustrous dark steel-green above; darker and shading into 
black on wings and tail, which is forked. Under parts soft 
white. 
Fremale—Duller than male. 
ange—North America, from Hudson Bay to Panama. 
Migrations—End of March. September or later. Summer resident. 
“¢ The stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times: and the turtle and the 
crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming.”—Jeremiah, viii. 7. 
The earliest of the family to appear in the spring, the tree 
swallow comes skimming over the freshly ploughed fields with 
a wide sweep of the wings, in what appears to be a perfect 
ecstasy of flight. More shy of the haunts of man, and less gre- 
garious than its cousins, it is usually to be seen during migration 
flying low over the marshes, ponds, and streams with a few 
chosen friends, keeping up an incessant warbling twitter while 
performing their bewildering and tireless evolutions as they catch 
their food on the wing. Their white breasts flash in the sun- 
light, and it is only when they dart near you, and skim close 
along the surface of the water, that you discover their backs to 
be not black, but rich, dark green, glossy to iridescence. 
It is probable that these birds keep near the waterways 
because their favorite insects and wax-berries are more plentiful 
in such places: but this peculiarity has led many people to the 
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