So pleasing is this bird that we welcome it is as a harbinger of spring.  Its coloring is rich and warm.  Its flight is graceful and poised.  Its song is cheerful, whether twittered softly or poured out in sparkling trills. 

It has made man's habitat its own.  Since man's settlement of the wilderness this swallow has nested in barns and sheds, under bridges and wharves, and even in boat-houses.  The only food it takes in return is flying insects, in great quantities.  This helps control man's pests. 

This story gives a year of a barn swallow's life of flight, from his first take-off from a nest in the Mississippi Valley, through his 6,000 -mile migration to South America, and back - to the feeding of his own nestlings. 

The swift, flight-paces narrative is science in every detail.  The barn swallow is dealt with as an individual bird, not as a person.  The text has been checked by Dr. Arthur A. Allen, Professor of Ornithology, Cornell University, who says: 

"The author has produced a very intriguing story that should give the children an excellent concept of the life of the swallow." 

 

From the dustjacket