Show Out of Doors in the West Sketches of Natural History in the Rocky Mountain Plateau Edited by J. H. Professor of Nature Study in the University of Utah The Wondrous Flyers The Swallows are among the best known of our Their gentle domestic habits and and their circling have caused them to be greatly while their usefulness to man is quite in keeping with their graceful motions and pretty In a government report it is remarked that what may be termed the interstate relations of birds are not always so simple as in the case of the Some birds are most desirable summer residents of northern but when migrating they damage certain crops in the southern No so with the Their their graceful and their sociability insure them a welcome everywhere and endear them to every lover of Their esthetic great as it is not so important as their economic so constant and is the warfare they wage against the insect Were it not for swallows and other bird successful agriculture would be The Barn The barn a beautiful and graceful quite common throughout the still nests in building its mud cradle in the form of a bowl-shaped wall pocket on the barn and lining it with Its eggs are from three to speckled with brown and The under parts are tawny darkest on the the forehead is dark the rest of the upper parts glossy steel blue wings and tail tinged with purple and green tail except middle marked with large whitish The tail is forked for about half its the outside feather tapered to a The forked tail gives to this swallow its gliding Why is this lovely once so now so rare The tightly built modern barn no longer invites the presence the barn swallow by affording it friendly and the birds are becoming We should provide openings in modern barns and encourage the presence of swallows by providing convenient nesting By such easy and effective methods this beautiful species may be greatly increased in This bird also protection from the English which in one foray has been known to kill the young and destroy the eggs of a large t i Flight of Barn When the swallows skim in the they are not but catching winged ants and small During the nesting season the food flight of the swallow is incessant the birds are of a sociable and often go out in groups in search of their happy twittering song when on the wing being one of the sounds we should miss Its first appearance as well as its in autumn is usually in the vicinity of and before pairing the nightly roost of the birds is in the low bushes of some marshy Two broods are reared in a the first nest being in early May and the second in June and sometimes we have had a third nest in the barn in the middle of one on a cloudy day or late in the has stood by a mill pond or other large body of forest must have noticed these swallows skimming low over the taking the gnats that swarm upon wings that never It was often the Barn Swallow and Nest habit of idle and to throw sticks and other missiles at these low-flying to see how many they could kill this game being in the nesting as well as the flocking This sort of thing of mere wanton as there can be no pretense of eating the Be the cause what it this swallow is decreasing Mabel Osgood The breast and wings of these beautiful birds twenty- five years ago were used to such an extent for millinery that an editorial appeared in Forest and entitled the This agitation resulted in the organization of the first Audubon in for bird The Swallow The barn swallow belongs to the family of of There are oyer eighty The purple of the glistening purple being a black is the largest of our e catbird larger than either wood thrush or dust-colored bank whose coat blends well the bank of clay or loam in which he burrows his nest less in size than our flipping is the being the southern states may safely be and augmenting in every possible the duty of protecting way the numbers of resident birds that prey upon the boll But it is for the northern states to aid the good work so far as lies in their An enlightened patriotism knows no state The of either district is the insect enemy of the farmer enemy of the common and only from co-operation can come a. full measure of The Violet-Green The northern violet-green swallow is a species confined to the Rocky It is the most beautiful of all our I have found its containing the eggs and the in various stages of in great numbers on the cliffs of Currant creek about thirty miles east of Heber They are splendid One pair of youngsters that a friend picked up from the nest an unwise procedure in order to have them did not appear to be full but the moment they felt the air strike them when taken from the nest flew to join the flock of parent birds circling in the air about the These pretty birds are parrot green on the top of the They have a narrow purple while the back is bottle green and glossed with violet in the sun's The back near the tail is shaded with The wing and tail quills are glossed with indigo the wing coverts edged with green the rump with white patches on the and the under parts This beautiful bird nests also in the woodpecker of the pines and quaking aspens of the high It does not usually come into the but is sometimes found near Ways and Home of Violet Coues says unlike the barn and eave glossy is a confirmed rather jealous of the ancient customs of its and slow to yield to the allurements of though the most tempting boxes be presented its The tree or cliff crevice is the natural and still the usual as we see clearly from study of these birds in the It inhabits wooded regions from the Rocky mountains to the spreading over all our territory during it may be found breeding wherever suitable trees like other is more or less locally During September it retires probably none winter It is resident and very common in species of these quite generally distributed throughout the while nine are to be found at some time of the year within the borders of the United abounded among the cottonwoods the lower Truckee near Pyramid in and every knot-hole seemed to be possessed by a They were just then and used to come daily to the dooryard of the reservation-house to gather The object selected was usually a but ally a scrap of or rag of cloth or a piece of string was picked up and borne to the such conspicuous prizes being generally the occasion of much twittering as the little laborer struggled off to the nest with his But the birds not confined to the wooded river being equally numerous high up- in the Wasatch among the aspens at an elevation of or pair which had year after year- received supplies of feathers their nests from the younger members of the family in whose yard their nest was would almost take them from the hands of their This pair sat so close as to permit themselves to be taken from their and when released would at once fly back to their am uncertain to whom we owe the discovery of the fact that the eggs of the violet-green swallow are white and The information was long delayed in partly no to the difficulty of getting at the even when the artfully hidden retreat is The nest may be in honeycombed entirely out of or in the top of a blasted too rotten to be scaled with or out of reach in a knot-hole in sound |