lifeofjardini: amaranth-mantis: awwww-cute: Just some baby…
Just some baby swallows
Lies.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that birds from this family are always misleadingly named. Tree swallows don’t swallow trees, barn swallows don’t swallow barns, don’t even get me started on cave swallows…
Aw, they’re cute. I’m guessing these are barn swallows, named not because they eat barns (insert emoji for deadpan stare) but because they tend to hang around and/or nest in barns.
Barn swallows are the North American swallow species with the deeply forked tail (that is, they possess the eponymous “swallow tail”). They probably pay a price for it; Darwin’s books must always balance, and if a species has a deeply forked tail that is less suited for straight, level flight there must be a corresponding advantage that offsets the inefficiency, or evolution would quickly do away with the feature.
If you watch swallows, including barn swallows, you quickly see what’s going on. Like all swallows, barn swallows feed by catching flying insects on the wing. Barn swallows specialize in “contour hunting”, in which they fly just above the ground, skimming just inches above the tops of the grass or brush or whatever it is they’re flying over. They thereby gain access to low-flying insects that other swallow species miss out on. But in order to do that, they are optimized for maneuverability, with that long, forked tail, either side of which they can crank to the side, leveraging them into tight, fast turns that other swallows can’t match.
All swallows are graceful and acrobatic. But barn swallows are noticeably more graceful and more acrobatic. The flight of a barn swallow (or more typically a group of barn swallows) working across a field, swooping and skimming just above the vegetation, is a beautiful thing to watch.
Reposted from http://ift.tt/1no23eZ.
Tags: barn swallows, flight.
