ON THE WILD SIDE
I’VE had a couple of friends already this year excitedly come up to me to tell me they’ve seen their first swallow of the year.
And who can blame them for being happy? It’s a miracle that these tiny little guys ever make the journey, and yet they do it every year.
The males are always the first to arrive, so it’s safe to assume the first one of the year you see is going to be a boy, followed a week or so later by the ladies.
So in celebration of the summer, let’s talk today about these pretty little aerial acrobats and their lives.
The swallow we all know and love is actually known as the “barn swallow”. We only tend to call it that because it’s the only swallow we get…. Or is it?
The swallow family has over 80 members worldwide, but that also includes their very close relatives, the martins.
Rarely, but occasionally people in various parts of the UK catch sightings of a different species, the red-rumped swallow, though this is a pretty special occurrence. As such today we’ll only be talking about the barn swallow.
We have a million swallows here in the UK during the summer, which is a nice big number, unless you take into account that there are around 14 European countries that each have a higher population.
Of all of his extended family, the barn swallow is the single most widespread swallow in the world. You might think of the swift as being part of that family, but despite similar behaviour they are not related at all. Not even a little.
They come to the UK for the summer and to breed, although in the winter they live in Africa. Barn swallows who breed in Europe can be found all over Africa, but British birds fly the farthest south, settling in southern Africa.
Even here they spend much of their time on the wing, but can be spotted landed, very often on telegraph wires. They exclusively hunt, and drink, on the wing. They fly low over water to scoop it into their beaks, while also taking advantage of the insects there. They can be spotted pretty much anywhere, but their favourite places are around big animals, like cows and horses. They sleep alongside them, and fly around the large animals, who kick up insects for them as they walk. Hence the name “barn swallow”.