THE BARN SWALLOW 
By MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT 
The National Association of Audubon Societies 
Educational Leaflet No. 32 
Once upon a time many country children knew a Barn Swallow as 
well as they knew the chickens they fed. If they could call only half a 
dozen birds by name this Swallow was sure to be one of them. Now 
one may live in a village, or even in the open farming country, without 
having the Barn Swallow as a neighbor, and meet it only as it perches 
on a telegraph-wire by the roadside, or flies in a great flock, in company 
with others of its tribe, to its roost in some marsh-meadow while 
assembling for the autumnal migration. 
BARN SWALLOW AT NEST 
Photographed by Finley and Bohlman 
Why should this be so when the Barn Swallow is a bird of the 
air, and feeds upon the wing, and therefore apparently takes fewer risks 
in getting its living than do the birds of the trees or the ground ? Let us 
spend a few minutes in studying the bird, and the conditions that surround 
it, and see whether an answer to the question may be found. 
The Swallow family includes more than eighty species generally 
distributed throughout the world, nine of which are to be found at some 
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