Interactive Birds

Birds

Swallow

Hirundo rustica

A fast, glossy-blue flyer with a red face and long forked tail, here for the summer.

Size
About 18cm, with long tail streamers
Look for it
April to September
Where
Farms, fields and open country near water

My spotter's list

Swoops round you in fast loops and hardly ever lands. Move your pointer and see.

When to look

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Swallow

Good to know

Six things about the swallow

Travel

All the way to Africa

British swallows spend the winter in southern Africa and fly thousands of miles to get there and back each year.

Speed

On the move

On migration a swallow can cover a couple of hundred miles in a day.

Food

Catching flies

Swallows catch flying insects as they swoop low over fields and water.

Drink

Drinking on the wing

They even drink in flight, skimming low over a pond and dipping their beak into the water.

Nests

Mud cups

Swallows build cup-shaped nests of mud on beams and ledges inside barns and sheds.

Tails

The long tail

The males with the longest tail streamers are the most attractive to females.

The real thing

Photos of the swallow

Swallow, photo 1
Photo: Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
Swallow, photo 2
Photo: Ken Billington, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons
Swallow, photo 3
Photo: Jörg Hempel, CC BY-SA 2.0 de, Wikimedia Commons
Out and about

How to spot one

From April to September, watch the sky over fields, farmyards and water. Look for the long tail streamers, and birds lined up on wires in late summer.

Lend a hand

How to help

Leave a gap for them to reach barn and outbuilding rafters, and a patch of wet mud in spring for nest building.

Keep going

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