Tuleyome Tales

The American Barn Swallow: A Summer Guest

By Debra Chase

June, 2009

Once caught by the thousands to be used in women's hats, eating insects literally on the fly, and returning year after year to the same nesting sites, the American Barn Swallow is one of hte harbingers of summer. A beautiful low-flying bird, I always look forward to the spring nesting ritual and the summer babies emerging from the nest.

The Barn Swallw is also the species the slaughter of which aroused in the mind of George Bird Grinell such indignation that he wrote a vigorous article in 1886 on the incredible waste of bird life for millinery. That of course soon led to the founding of the first Audubon Society.

Read the full article here.