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Plate XIV.—HIRUNDO HORREORUM, Barton.—Barn Swallow.
The Barn Swallow, the chief of its fellows, is the most widely diffused, most generally abundant, and, wherever found, the best known of all our species. None are more universally or deservedly popular.
It ranges throughout North America from Florida to Greenland, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, breeding, strange to say, over nearly the whole of this vast territory.
Such is its attachment to last year's scenes and associations, that it leaves its far-off home in the sunny South rather early, gathering its forces from the plains of Brazil, the spicy isles of the Indies, and the lofty plateau of Mexico, and wends its graceful flight northward.
Unlike many of its kin, this familiar little species does not wait until the soft mild days of May have visited the earth, but, actuated by an overmastering instinct to revisit the land of its nativity, it comes ere the dying throes of the winter-demon have ceased to be heard in the wild March winds.
But the more genial fields and streams of our Southern border-states first invite its presence, and offer it an abiding-place, until its more northern habitats are made to rejoice under the influence of the sun-god. In the Central section of this great land of ours, this generally occurs during the early days of balmy April, when spring may be said to commence in earnest.