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Step 1
Look at photos of the common tree swallow and you'll see a medium-sized bird, about 5 3/4"" tall, with unique iridescent blue-green upperparts and white underparts, chin, breast and belly. Its wings are dark gray and its tail is dark and forked, making it relatively easy to identify. Younger swallows are brown in color.
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Step 2
Trace the tree swallow from its breeding ground in Alaska, east through northern Manitoba to Newfoundland and south to California, Colorado, Nebraska, and Maryland. Wintering in California, the Gulf coast and the Carolinas, the tree swallow prefers open areas near water, like fields, marshes, meadows, beaver ponds and wooded swamps with dead trees.
Highly social, it often gathers in flocks of more than a million birds during migration. -
Step 3
Note the tree swallow's diet which consists mostly of flying insects. They are quite adept at foraging while in flight and above open water or ground and getting insects from the surface of water and even from vertical surfaces. If weather makes finding insects difficult, tree swallows will eat bayberries and other plant seeds.
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Step 4
Check out a tree swallow's nest, which is usually built in some sort of cavity, such as a dead tree or a hollow stump over water. Made of grasses, mosses and lined with feathers from other species, the nest is built entirely by the female. Tree swallows will raise one brood per year, usually four to six white eggs. Both parents share the tasks of feeding and finding food for the chicks.
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Step 5
Listen to a tree swallow's song. It's usually a quick, repetitious "silip" or "chi-veet."
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Step 6
Learn more about the tree swallow, a socially monogamous bird that also has one of the highest levels of extrapair paternity in birds, with females having control over which male bird fathers their offspring.
