Swale

“ I have followed them across country from the headwaters of one stream to another, to swamp and swales where the muskrat abounds, turning every "hole inside out," so to speak, and they seem to know them all. ”

“ Do you even know distinctly from each other,— (for that is the real naturalist's business; instead of confounding them with each other) ,—do you know distinctly the five great species of this familiar bird?—the swallow, the house-martin, the sand-martin, the swift, and the Alpine swift?—or can you so much as answer the first question which would suggest itself to any careful observer of the form of its most familiar species,—yet which I do not find proposed, far less answered, in any scientific book,—namely, why a swallow has a swallow-tail? ”

“ How strange it is to think that while we are making the best of our winter, the swallow has taken her unerring flight to Africa, the swans and cranes have long since made their southward journey, and myriads of small birds have gone in search of food and warmth, to return next spring as certainly to their old haunts, where they can breed in cool and comfortable quarters! ”

“ Avenues, and long walks, under hedges, and pasture-fields, and mown meadows where cattle graze, are her delight, especially if there are trees interspersed; because in such spots insects most abound. When a fly is taken a smart snap from her bill is heard, resembling the noise at the shutting of a watch-case: but the motion of the mandibles is too quick for the eye.
The swallow, probably the male bird, is the excubitor to house-martins, and other little birds, announcing the approach of birds of prey. ”

“ But, happily, the beautiful barn swallow is too familiar to need description. Wheeling about our barns and houses, skimming over the fields, its bright sides 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 glistening buff of its breast.
This is a typical bird of the air, as an oriole is of the trees and a sparrow of the ground. ”

“ And the year wore on and the swallows came again, and the year wore on and they sat again on the gables, and all the poultry discussed the departure of the hen.
And very early one morning, the wind being from the North, the swallows all soared suddenly and felt the wind in their wings; and a strength came upon them and a strange old knowledge and a more than human faith, and flying high they left the smoke of our cities and small remembered eaves, and saw at last the huge and homeless sea, and steering by grey sea-currents went southward with the wind. ”

“ Swallows and sparrows not only build their nests on my roof, but even enter my rooms without concern—one swallow has actually built its nest in the ceiling of the bathroom—and the weasel purloins fish under my very eyes without any scruples of conscience. ”

“ Dear swallows, already they brave much during their migrations—the storms, the waves, and the electric wires erected by a debased portion of humanity along their airlines.
[239] The bracken upon the headland has rusted, and the gorse is brown and sapless. Never has there been such an untarnished sky fused with the sea. Those stately swans, the clouds, have sailed over the marge of the earth, leaving not even a downy feather to tell of their heavenly passage. Somewhere in a brake of blackthorn a robin sings frailly, while a red kestrel hangs above for sight of vole or mouse. ”

“ Along the face of such crumbling rocks, swallows' nests are clustered, thick as cities, and eagles and deer do not disdain their summits. One morning, out in the boat along the base of these rocks, it was amusing, and affecting too, to see these swallows put their heads out to look at us. There was something very hospitable about it, as if man had never shown himself a tyrant near them. What a morning that was! Every sight is worth twice as much by the early morning light. ”

“ The green fields and the blue sky have been given to it as its heritage, and the barbarous custom of binding its wandering wing and shutting it up in a cage should be censured and condemned by all healthy minds. The swallow, indeed, cannot be thus tamed and domesticated. ”

“ On the ledges of their precipice colony the gulls are no more, the swallows have followed the sun. Many times have I searched the flawless bell-flower of the sky for these ragtailed vagrants, but not even one is to be seen. I cannot understand it; my heart is heavy. Why have they gone so suddenly? The sun shines, and insects are plentiful. Usually the hosts foregather on the single telegraph wire that never ceases to hum between the sun-bleached posts in the sunken lane. ”

“ The post seldom lacked its occupant, a baby swallow with head up, looking eagerly into the flock above him. This isolated youngling I made my special study. Sometimes on the approach of a grown up bird, he lifted his wings and opened his mouth, petitioning for, and plainly expecting food. At other times he paid not the least attention to a swallow passing over him, but sat composed and silent, though watchful, apparently for the right one to come in sight. ”

“ Let us suppose a swallow has been so careless as to become entangled in a mesh of loose threads, and the more frantically it struggles to escape the more firmly it binds its fetters. With wings and claws held fast it is in danger of perishing. Uttering piteous cries, it calls on its comrades for help. All hasten to give aid, noisily making plans for relief and working away with beak and talons until they finally unsnarl the tangle and free the captive. ”

“ Then she brought the swallow some water in a flower-leaf, and after he had drunk, he told her that he had wounded one of his wings in a thorn-bush, and could not fly so fast as the other birds, who were soon far away on their journey to warm countries. Then at last he had fallen to the earth, and could remember no more nor how he came to be where she had found him.
The whole Winter the swallow remained underground, and Tiny nursed him with care and love. Neither the mole nor the field-mouse knew anything about it, for they did not like swallows. ”

“ And we are no more than the vanished wolf to the swallow, and so long as we refrain from peeping into his nest and handling his eggs or young, he does not know us, and is hardly conscious of our existence. All the social feelings and sympathy of the swallow are for creatures as aërial and swift-winged as itself—its playmates in the wide fields of air.
Swallows hawking after flies in a village street, [Pg_51] where people are walking about, is a familiar sight, Swifts are just as confident. ”

“ The swallow, as we usually see him, gliding and doubling in the air with a freedom surpassing that of other birds, has considerable beauty, being richly coloured and of an elegant figure, with sharply forked tail and long, pointed wings. ”

“ Since I have been here I have learned that there are such things as swallows—fidgety birds, that winter abroad like Auntie May and Mr. Fox, and that I would as soon think of eating as I would of eating the baby. I feel a sort of relationship, too, as if swallows were the 'smoke-blues' among birds; their fur is the kind of blue we are, only darker, and they are not at all a common kind of bird.
One summer a swallow built its nest in a tool-house not far off the tree where the nurse and baby and Lotty used to take the pram and sit all the afternoon. Lotty had not much to do ”

“ Suppose you had never seen a swallow; but that its general habit of life had been described to you, and you had been asked, how you thought such a bird would build its nest. A creature, observe, whose life is to be passed in the air; whose beak and throat are shaped with the fineness of a net for the catching of gnats; and whose feet, in the most perfect of the species, are so feeble that it is called the Footless Swallow, and cannot stand a moment on the ground with comfort. Of all land birds, the one that has least to do with the earth ”

“ Naturally, these birds are inhabitants of caves and rocky cliffs, or of hollow trees; but, like the swifts, the moment a man builds a house or barn in Europe, or Asia, or South America, there certain swallows are sure to come to live with him, just as they do around our village and farm houses in North America. Hence the English people call their common species house-swallow, and we give the name barn-swallow to our similar one. ”

“ It is an owl that has been trained by the Graces. It is a bat that loves the morning light. It is the aërial reflection of a dolphin. It is the tender domestication of a trout." That is, no doubt, very poetical, but it would be absolutely useless as a scientific description, and, I must confess, would never have suggested, to me at least, the idea of a swallow. ”

“ Again, the darting of swallows, as they flit to and fro across a river, is mimicked by masked men dancing side by side: the swarming of sandflies in the air is acted by a swarm of maskers; and so with the movements of the black vulture, the owl, the jaguar, the aracu fish, the house-spider, and the dung-beetle. ”

“ This common taste for the same kind of food often brings the three into close quarters, and it is curious to notice the different methods they use to compass the same end; the swallow ceaselessly rushing at full speed through the air, the wagtail trusting to his nimbleness of foot, and the flycatcher making a series of little excursions upwards after his prey. I have seen swallows walking about on the grass and picking up flies, and when their young ones are resting on the ground they will often bring them food there, alighting by the side first of one and then of another. ”

“ Thus they, many a time, fall prey to Hawks and crows, their enemies;-- Even the nest sometimes is entered By the snakes and fleas and flies. Swallows migrate in the Winter, From the cold to warmer climes, Flying back as Spring approaches, To the haunts of former times.
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"Ne'er one swallow makes a Summer," Is a saying everywhere;-- But when swallows come in myriads, Blessed Summer-time is here.
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THE MOCKING-BIRD.
The New World boasts the Mocking-bird And whether caged or free, His wondrous voice pours forth in songs Of rarest melody. ”

“ In speaking of the swallow, Poietes exclaims—"I delight in this living landscape! The swallow is one of my favourite birds, and a rival of the nightingale; for he cheers my sense of seeing as much as the other does my sense of hearing. He is the glad prophet of the year, the harbinger of the best season: 324 he lives a life of enjoyment amongst the loveliest forms of nature: winter is unknown to him; and he leaves the green meadows of England in autumn, for the myrtle and orange groves of Italy, and for the palms of Africa: he has always objects of pursuit, and his success is secure. ”

“ Nevertheless the swallow, protected by Him who cares for the sparrow, generally braves the hardships of migration, and the following spring, guided by the same mysterious instinct, finds his way across continents and seas to his old home, where, identified by some little mark which has been put upon him—a silken thread as a garter, or a light silver ring—he is recognised as the old familiar friend, and appears to be no less happy to be once more with them than are they to welcome him. ”

“ Look for the buffy rump-patch of this slow-flying, graceful swallow, which gathers mud for its nest without alighting on the ground and whose conversational twitterings sound like the squeaks produced by rubbing a piece of wet rubber with the finger. In early spring and during later summer, several kinds of swallows will be found together in the migratory flocks. Cliff Swallows are easily driven from their nests by English Sparrows or Starlings; they will not use bird-boxes put out for them. ”

“ You may frequently notice the swallow, on the borders of a limpid stream, moistening in the water a little bit of earth which he holds in his beak, and with this he builds his habitation; and, though the outside of its nest is formed of hard and durable materials, the inside is lined with the softest and warmest. There are even some birds, who pull off their own feathers to make up a comfortable bed, wherein to secure their young from every inclemency of the elements. ”

“ Small crows and hundreds of swallows are on eager wing, darting into the smoke and out again, seizing fugitive flies. Scores of insects, in their haste to escape from the fire, jump into the river, and the active fish enjoy a rare feast. ”

“ The swallow does not go back to its young with a single fly at a time, but with a mouth filled as full as possible, so that those who try to calculate the usefulness of this bird by the number of the journeys that it makes to its nest, underestimate its destruction of insects by probably fifty per cent. ”

“ The Phoebe, a Flycatcher—7 inches
16 THE BARN SWALLOW
The Barn Swallows arrive in the North toward the end of April and leave early in September. They are sociable birds and travel in huge flocks.
Food: Insects, caught upon the wing, form the diet of those Swallows. They dart here and there, over field and water, catching their prey in swift, graceful flight.
Feet: Often, in the season of migration, thousands of Swallows perch upon telephone wires, sometimes in such large numbers that the wires are broken. Their small feet are well suited for this, but not for walking upon the ground. ”

“ And being a house-bird, and accustomed to the human form, when our summer migrants return to us with the return of the sun, and the others seek their customary homes in woods and groves by [120] the sides of streams and marshes, and on downs and waste lands, the swallow alone comes direct to us to deliver the glad message, so that even the sick and aged and infirm, who can no longer leave their beds or rooms, are able to hear it. What wonder that we cherish a greater affection for, and are more intimate with, the swallow than with our other feathered fellow-creatures! ”