What Does the Barn Swallow Eat?

Video Transcript

"Barn swallows are an aerial feeder which means that they pick off their food on the wing, which tells you that their food is essentially something else that can fly and it's in the form of insects. One of the things that a lot of people don't realize is that the atmosphere is filled with small insects. This can be everything from flying ants to ballooning spiders which are young spiders that when they first hatch they put out a silken thread and go up into the air and they are really abundant. Small flies, small beetles even mosquitoes and things that are in the air. Water born insects that will often be over the surface of a pond like midges and things that hatch in huge numbers. You'll see barn swallows often skimming back and forth over the water or zooming around in the air picking off these things that we can't even see with binoculars, it's very hard to see in many cases what they are foraging on. But the point is they are chasing flying insects, they are not a bird species that sits on a branch and goes and pecks at insects or scratches around on the ground and looks for seeds. It's got to pretty much be moving and in the air for them to feed on it. And this is pretty true of most all of the swallow species. They tend to be birds that feed on insects, flying insects and arthropods that are in the air."