Barn Swallow

Look for

A sleek, blue-backed swallow with a deeply forked "swallow-tail", rusty throat and belly, and steel-blue back and wings. In flight: graceful, acrobatic, banking low over fields and water.

Size: ~6.75" — small but with a long tail.

Listen for

• Song: a continuous liquid twittering chatter, often with a dry rattle mixed in.
• Calls: sharp "chee-vit" in flight.

Where in Memphis

Open country with structures. Barn Swallows need buildings or bridges to nest against:

• Shelby Farms fields + barns
• Bridges across Wolf River and smaller creeks
• Rural barns throughout Shelby County
• Mississippi River bluffs (nesting on bridges, ferry docks)

Arrive in early-to-mid April, gone by mid-October.

Behavior

• Aerial insectivores — eat exclusively flying insects caught in mid-air.
• Mud-nest builders. Construct open cup nests from pellets of mud mixed with grass, glued to bridge beams, barn rafters, eaves. Same nest reused for years.
• Colonial — dozens of pairs in a single barn.
• Dive-bomb intruders near the nest — aggressive parents.

Story

The most widespread bird on Earth

Barn Swallows have the largest global range of any songbird — they breed on every continent except Antarctica, and winter on every continent except Antarctica. Your Memphis barn swallow summered here and will winter in South America.

The domestication partnership

Barn Swallows were originally cliff nesters. When humans built barns, bridges, and outbuildings, the swallows moved in — and the ancestral cliff-nesting population has almost disappeared in North America. Barn Swallows are now essentially dependent on humans, like Purple Martins.

This is a 6,000-year-old partnership at minimum.

Tail length and mate choice

Male Barn Swallows have slightly longer tail streamers than females. Classic sexual-selection studies show that females prefer males with longer tails — and males with the longest tails have the healthiest offspring. One of ornithology's cleanest demonstrations of sexual selection.

The disappearing barn

American barns are getting demolished at an accelerating rate — replaced by modern pole structures that swallows can't use. Barn Swallow populations have declined ~30% since the 1970s. Saving old barns = saving swallows.

Fun facts

• They drink on the wing, dipping the bill as they fly over water.
• They bathe on the wing, too, skimming a pond surface.
• They can live 8+ years in the wild.
• The scientific name rustica means "rural" in Latin.
• Cliff Swallows (with square tails and mud-jug nests) also nest in Memphis but less commonly.