ikea wUDUBON- BULLETIN 
Published Quarterly by the 
ier NOs ATU DUEB' ON: S'0 C1 B'T-Y 
2001 NORTH CLARK STREET, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 
Number 62 June, 1947 
The Barn Swallow 
By IvAN MERRILL* 
AN ACCOUNT dealing with the common barn swallow is possibly a waste of 
time and effort in this money mad era of realism, but on the other hand, 
so characteristically beautiful and graceful is this tuft of nature that 
Burroughs found it pleasant to characterize it in his “Under the Maples” 
something like this: “Is not the swallow cne of the oldest and dearest of 
birds? Known to the poets and sages and prophets of all peoples. So 
infantile, so helpless and awkward upon the earth, so graceful and master- 
ful on the wing, the child and darling of the summer air, reaping its 
invisible harvest in the fields of space as if it dined on sunbeams, touching 
no earthly food, drinking and bathing and mating on the wing, swiftly, 
tirelessly ccursing the long day through, a thought on wing's, a lyric in the 
shape of a bird. Only in the free fields of the summer air could it have 
got that steel-bluc of wings and that warm tan of the breast.” 
I find that quite to my liking, as far as mere words can do justice to 
this creature, which could easily have derived its being in the fairyland of 
fantasy, or have taken to living wing from some wisp of wind-blown smoke 
as it wended its graceful way over the field in the cool damp of a spring 
evening. 
Last summer while on a visit to some farm friends in Fayette County, 
Illinois, my attention was called to what I deem a very unusual, beautiful 
and homey sight. It was milking time when Minnie and Ed shouted for 
me to come to the barn, then pointed nonchalantly to a nest on the side of 
the loft rafters. This was a barn swallow nest and one with a history and 
family life attached to it that could easily be the envy of most of us that 
enjoy being accounted for as human beings. 
The nest was made in the usual manner of the barn ares except that 
it was attached perilously close to the cows that were attended daily here in 
their stanchions. All in all there was probably four feet clearance from 
the cow’s back to the nest; an average height man could easily have reached 
up and destroyed the home, yet this same nest has been there for seven 
years. Each year the swallows return to it, remodel it and move in, set 
up housekeeping and assume the season’s duties, that of raising strong 
healthy families, and such housekeepers as they are! Here among the 
heavy cobwebs and chaff they keep a neat, tidy nursery. No droppings are 
ever allowed in the nest; even the very young birds are soon taught that 
cleanliness is next to Godliness, and they, being of Godlike nature, thrive 
*Mr. Merrill is the editor of a nature column, ‘Out of Doors with Ivan Merrill,’ in 
the East St. Louis (1ll.) Journal. 
bil 
