This week’s Bird of the Week, compliments of the Weminuche Audubon Society and Audubon Rockies, is the barn swallow.
Arthur Cleveland Bent was an amateur American ornithologist, celebrated for his 21-volume study of North American birds published between the years of 1919 and 1968.
In it he describes the barn swallow as “a welcome companion and a useful friend to the farmer ... in pursuit of the troublesome insects that annoy both man and beast.”
The barn swallow is the most abundant and widely distributed swallow in the world, breeding across the Northern Hemisphere and wintering across the southern. These colorful swallows have shiny, dark blue upperparts, rust-colored foreheads and throats, and pale orange-colored bellies. Their tails are long and deeply forked. They spend much of their lives on the wing, drinking, feeding, courting and mating in midair.
These birds, which once used caves and cliffs for nest sites, now have adapted to build their nests almost exclusively on man-made structures including bridges, barns, homes, garages and culverts. They forage for insects in open areas in low flight, often nearly hugging the ground or the surface of water.
While we benefit from their roles in keeping insect populations in check, when a pair chooses to build a nest on the porch light in an entryway, dive-bombing nest defense and copious amounts of poop may turn them into annoying houseguests. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act makes it a federal crime to destroy nests in use.
Both parents participate in nest building, with each making hundreds of trips to collect a beakful of mud, which they mix with grass stems and saliva to form small pellets. These are stuck together to form a semicircular or circular nest, depending on its location. Mud nests are lined with grass and feathers and may be reused for second broods or in subsequent years.
Barn swallows were once hunted for the hat trade and are still hunted for food in parts of their winter ranges. Like other aerial insectivores, today they are threatened by the widespread use of pesticides that destroy their food source.
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Photo courtesy Charles Martinez