Barn Swallow

Voice

A busy twittering song of squeaky and chirping notes, always rounded off with a grating rattling tsrrrr, delivered from a wire or from inside the barn between April and August. The flight call is a cheerful vit-vit; a passing cat or Sparrowhawk brings a sharp, persistent alarm.

Identification

Slim, with long pointed wings and very long outer tail feathers forming a deep fork, showing a row of white spots the moment the tail is spread. Upperparts glossy steel-blue, forehead and throat rusty red, with a complete blue breast band and creamy underparts. Males have longer streamers; juveniles are short-tailed and dull.

Confusion species

House Martin has a conspicuous white rump, a short forked tail and pure white underparts, and flies higher on flickering wings. Sand Martin is small and brown, with a brown breast band, short tail and fluttering flight low over water. Swift is bigger, wholly dark, scythe-winged and shows no white at all.

Habitat

Farmyards, cattle sheds, barns and village edges with livestock, dung and muddy puddles, surrounded by grassland, ditches and fields full of flying insects. It nests on a beam or wall ledge indoors, and so depends on doors and hatches being left open.

Range and movements

Breeds throughout Europe. In the Netherlands common in the countryside, especially at dairy farms and riding stables. In Spain common in villages and at cortijos, with a few birds wintering in the south. Migrates to southern Africa from late August to October, roosting in reedbeds en route, and returns from late March.

• Resident
• Breeding (summer)
• Winter
• Passage
• Migration direction
• dark = core range, pale = thinly spread

Where and when to look

In April and May work a dairy farm or riding stable and watch low over the pasture and along ditch banks; in cool, damp weather they hunt just above the grass. In August thousands gather at dusk in reedbeds, one of the finest spectacles of late summer.

Conservation status

Declining in the long term as stock is kept indoors year-round, as modern barns are sealed and smooth-walled, as insect numbers fall with intensive land use and as muddy puddles for nest material dry up. Drought in the Sahel and along the flyway plays a part too. Open barn doors, mud patches and artificial nest cups help immediately.