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Barn Swallow

Barn Swallow

Hirundo rustica

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The Barn Swallow is the world's most widespread swallow, breeding across much of the Northern Hemisphere and wintering in the tropics and the Southern Hemisphere. Sleek and agile, it has glossy steel-blue upperparts, a rufous forehead and throat and a long, deeply forked tail. It lives closely alongside people, building mud cup nests inside barns and other buildings in open country.

Did you know?

  • It is the national bird of Austria and Estonia.
  • In many cultures the first swallows of the year are a traditional sign of spring.

Voice

Song
Call
Flight call

About the species

Identification

A long, deeply forked tail with long outer streamers and small white spots. The forehead and throat are rufous-red, the back blue-black and the underparts pale; the rump is not pale. Its long tail streamers could only be confused with Red-rumped Swallow; young birds in autumn have short streamers and paler throats and foreheads.

Family

Hirundinidae

Size

Small (sparrow)

Colours

blue, white, red, orange, black

About the habitat

Open countryside with low vegetation – farmland, pastures, meadows and lakeshores – especially around villages and farms with barns and other buildings for nesting; often near water.

Diet

Flying insects – flies, beetles, wasps, midges and others – caught in swift, low flight over fields and water; it drinks on the wing.

Behaviour

Flies fast and acrobatically, sweeping low over fields and water, twittering constantly; often perches in rows on wires. It builds a cup nest from hundreds of mud pellets on buildings or bridges and nests singly or in loose colonies. Both sexes sing, and they give sharp alarm calls when predators approach. Outside the breeding season it gathers in large communal roosts, often in reedbeds.

Sources

Photo: Dion Art, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Деревенская ласточка (Hirundo rustica), Мелихово.jpg

Sound: Jonathon Jongsma, XC83449, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://xeno-canto.org/83449

Sound: Robert Benson, XC757868, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://xeno-canto.org/757868

Sound: Borja Marcos, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hirundo_rustica_-_Barn_Swallow_XC422028.mp3

Text: Wikipedia (English) + FinBIF species descriptions, CC BY-SA 4.0; FinBIF: CC BY 4.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barn_swallow

See also