Wildlife Watching Wednesday: Barn Swallows Are Great Flycatchers

Wildlife Watching Wednesday: Barn Swallows Are Great Flycatchers

By: Tom Berg

Most birds are great insect hunters. While some bird species are just as happy to eat an insect as they are other things like seeds and small fruits, there are some birds that prefer to eat insects almost exclusively.  One of those insect specialists is the barn swallow.

Barn swallows are fairly small birds, about the size of a house sparrow. But the swallows are much more slim and streamlined than the chunky sparrows. Barn swallows have long, pointed wings and a deeply forked tail. Their feathers are a beautiful dark blue on their head and backs and their chest is a light orange color. Their chin and forehead is an even deeper orange.

Although barn swallows love to eat insects, they do not hop through grassy back yards like American robins looking for bugs crawling along the ground. These swallows capture the vast majority of their food on the wing. Like most swallows, barn swallows catch flying insects in midair with ease. Mayflies, moths, butterflies and bees are just some of the flying bugs they consume, and of course they eat small flies of all kinds. Swallows are incredibly maneuverable and they can change directions in the blink of an eye.

As their name implies, barn swallows are often found nesting in barns or in the eaves of many types of buildings. Before Europeans came to America and started building barns and outbuildings, barn swallows nested in caves and under rock outcroppings. But now they next almost exclusively in buildings made by humans. They build those nests out of mud gathered along the shorelines of lakes, ponds and creeks.

The common barn swallow is the most widespread species of swallow in the world, as they can be found throughout most of North America, all of South America, most of Europe and Asia, and about half of Africa. They are even found in the south Pacific and certain coastal areas of Australia.

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