Swallows.
Of these birds there are several kinds, but I am going to speak of only one or two of them now. The common barn swallow is one of the most interesting. It does not come much among us at the north, till the settled warm weather of May. A straggler now and then appears before, which has led to the adage, “One swallow does not make summer.”
The flight of the swallow is often low, but distinguished by great rapidity, and sudden turns and evolutions, executed as if by magic. Over fields and meadows, and the surface of pools and sheets of water, all the day may this fleet, unwearied bird be seen, skimming along, and describing, in its oft repeated circuit, the most intricate mazes. The surface of the water is indeed its delight; its insect food is there in great profusion; and it is beautiful to observe how dexterously it skims along, and with what address it dips and emerges, shaking the spray from its burnished plumage, as, hardly interrupted by the plunge, it continues its career. Thus it feeds, and drinks, and bathes upon the wing.
Bank Swallows.
The swallow breeds twice a year, and constructs its nest of mud or clay, mixed with hair and straw; the clay is tempered with the saliva of the bird, (with which nature has supplied it,) in order to make it tenacious and easily moulded. The shell or crust of the nest, thus composed, is lined with fine grass or feathers, firmly fixed against the rafters of barns or out-houses. The writer has heard of a pair that yearly built in the rafters of a wheelwright’s shop, undisturbed by the din of the hammer or the grating of the saw. The propensity which these birds, in common with their family, exhibit to return to the same spot, and to build in the same barn year after year, is one of the most curious parts of their history. During their sojourn in foreign climes, they forget not their old home, the spot where they were bred, the spot where they have reared their offspring; but, as soon as their instinct warns them to retrace their pilgrimage, back they hasten, and, as experiments have repeatedly proved, the identical pair that built last summer in the barn, again take up their old quarters, passing in and out by the same opening.
It is delightful to witness the care which the swallow manifests towards her brood. When able to leave the nest, she leads them to the ridge of the barn, where, settled in a row, and as yet unable to fly, she feeds them with great assiduity. In a day or two they become capable of flight, and then they follow their parents in all their evolutions, and are fed by them while on the wing. In a short time they commence an independent career, and set up for themselves.
The notes of the swallow, though hurried and twittering, are very pleasing; and the more so as they are associated in our minds with ideas of spring, and calm serenity, and rural pleasures. The time in which the bird pours forth its melody is chiefly at sunrise, when, in “token of a goodly day,” his rays are bright and warm.
“The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,
The swallow, twittering from the straw-built shed,”
unite alike to call man from his couch of rest, and to praise “the God of seasons as they roll.”
After the work of rearing the young, ere autumn sears the leaf, the swallow prepares to depart. Multitudes, from various quarters, now congregate together, and perch at night in clusters on barns or the branches of trees, but especially among the reeds of marshes and fens, round which they may be observed wheeling and sinking and rising again, all the time twittering vociferously, before they finally settle. It was from this circumstance that some of the older naturalists supposed the swallow to become torpid and remain submerged beneath the water during winter, and to issue forth from its liquid tenement on the return of spring; a theory utterly incompatible with reason and facts, and now universally discarded. The great body of these birds depart about the end of September.
The Holy Scriptures make frequent allusions to this interesting bird. Jeremiah, reproaching the Jews for their turning away from God, alludes to the swallow as obeying His laws, while they who have seen his glory rebelled: “Yea, the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times; and the turtle and the crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming; but my people know not the judgment of the Lord.” viii. 7.
The Psalmist notices the partiality of this bird for the temple of worship, the sanctuary of God: “Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even thine altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God.” Psalm lxxxiv. 3. Hezekiah, king of Judah, wrote of himself, “Like a crane or a swallow, so did I chatter.” Is. xxxviii. 14. In these casual notices we at least trace out that the habits, migration, and song of the swallow, were known to the inspired writers; a circumstance of no little value, since a false assertion that the facts of natural history are not correctly stated in the Bible, has long been among the weak engines used by the infidel against the validity of that book, “which maketh wise unto salvation.”
The Sand Martin, or Bank Swallow, is a most curious bird of this family. It is the least of the tribe, and the first to arrive, appearing a week or two before the swallow, and often while the weather is severe. Its flight is vacillating, but it is equally fond of skimming over the surface of the water. This bird, unlike its race, mines deep holes in sand or chalk cliffs, to the depth of two feet, or even more, at the extremity of which it constructs a loose nest of fine grass and feathers, artificially put together, in which it rears its brood.
The sand martin is of a social disposition; hence flocks of them unite to colonize a favorite locality, such as a precipitous bank or rock, which they crowd with their burrows. Professor Pallas says, that on the high banks of the Irtish, their nests are in some places so numerous, that, when disturbed, the inmates come out in vast flocks and fill the air like flies; and, according to Wilson, they swarm in immense multitudes along the banks of the Ohio and Kentucky.
What, it may be asked, are the instruments by which this little creature is able to bore into the solid rock, and excavate such a chamber? Its beak is its only instrument. This is a sharp little awl, peculiarly hard, and tapering suddenly to a point from a broad base; with this tool the bird proceeds to work, picking away from the centre to the circumference of the aperture, which is nearly circular; thus it works round and round as it proceeds, the gallery being more or less curved in its course, and having a narrow funnel-shaped termination. The author of “The Architecture of Birds” informs us that he has watched one of these swallows “cling with its sharp claws to the face of a sandbank, and peg in its bill, as a miner would do his pickaxe, till it had loosened a considerable portion of the sand, and then tumbled it down amongst the rubbish below.”