p. 26 Swallows breed across virtually the whole of Europe and Asia, from Ireland in the West, almost as far as the Bering Strait in the east, and south to the southernmost point of China, Hainan ISland – less than 20 degrees north of the equator… western populations mostly migrate to sub-Saharan Africa, while more eastern breeders head down to the Indian sub-continent, south-east Asia and even northern Australia.”
P. 29 So how different are swallows, martins and swifts from one another? By far the easiest to identify is the swift, which is about as closely related to swallows and martins as owls are to kestrels – that is, not at all. Their superficially similar appearance is via the process of convergent evolution, because both swifts and swallows hunt flying insects. Swifts are not passerines at all, but in a completely different order, the Apodiformes. This also includes the hummingbirds, with which they share many physical characteristics and habits. Swifts only come to land when they visit their nests, and even then they struggle… scientific name, Apus apus, means ‘no foot, no foot”. … they are almost entirely sooty-brown (appearing black in most lights) and have long, narrow, curved wings shaped like a scythe; not at all like the triangular wings of the swallows and martins. And while swallos and martins twitter, swifts scream, often rushing across the firmament like jet fighters”.
p. 31 “house martins are easy to identify. They are blue-black above, white below, and with a predominately white rump above a dark, short and slightly forked tail (whereas the swallow’s upperparts are completely blue-black. Overall, as Bill Oddie has pointed out, their colour and patterns bear a strikiung resemblence to a rather larger predator, the killer whale. House martens also nest on the outside of buildings, rather than inside as most barn swallows do.”
p. 32 “swallow is one of just 16 words for birds that occur in Anglo-Saxon literature. In one of the earliest collections of Old English writings, the Epinal-Erfurt Glossary (two manuscrupts compiled for Aldhelm, the Abbot of Malmesbury around the year AD 700) it appears alongside the Latin word Hirundo as “swaluuae”.
p. 72 Like almost all songvirds, the female lays a single egg each day – usually early in the morning – and does not start to incubate until the whole clucth is complete, thus ensuring the chicks will all hatch out at roughly the same time. She incubates the egg for between 13 and 16 days, with no help at all from her mate (in Britain and Europe at least) … But once the chicks hatch – naked, blind and helpless, and each weighing less than 2 grams – the male refeems himself by taking a full part in their feeding. Indeed, of all the world’s 5,000 or more songbirds, male swallows and martins make the greatest contribution to caring for the young.”
p. 73 “bring a bolus (concentrated ball) of a hundred or more insects bac to the nest, sometimes at a rate of one visit every minute”.
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