Swallows are beautiful little birdies, bright inhabitants of city and rural landscapes. Every spring they arrive, bring baby birds, and leave the native land in the fall. Where do these birds go to winter?
Swallows are tireless air insects hunters. Others as they have distinctive features cannot mix them with anybody: blue-black "dress coat", a light breast and the doubled tail. Flight speed - about 60 km/h, but a trajectory is very changeable and unpredictable. A large number of these graceful birds can be seen near the grazed herds around which mosquitoes, midges, gadflies curl. These insects form the basis of a diet of adult individuals and baby birds. For a nest of a swallow choose vertical surfaces: in the wild nature - rocks, breaks of the rivers, in settlements – eaves, roofs of houses, etc. They collect construction material for the house on the bank of reservoirs. The area of distribution of types of family of a swallow family is rather big. They do not meet only in areas of Far North. Time of an arrival of swallows for nesting depends on a geographical location of the region: in the southern areas they appear in April, and in northern and middle latitudes - in May. On a wintering these birds fly away some of the first in August-September. As a rule, move big packs during daylight hours though there are exceptions. Assumed several centuries ago that swallows winter at the bottom of reservoirs, having buried in silt, and with approach of spring get out to a surface. Such wrong opinion developed because during flights a large number of birds stops for spending the night in coastal thickets. Thanks to ringing the main ways of migration of swallows were traced. Besides, by means of this method the scientists managed to establish exact places of a wintering of certain populations. So, for example, the types nesting in Eastern Europe go to the South and the East of the Republic of South Africa, and individuals from Central and Western Europe fly to the Thailand, Southeast Asia, the African states located to the south of the Sahara (Liberia, Congo and others). Swallows make the longest flights among birds of group of vorobyinoobrazny – 9-12 thousand kilometers. They overcome this distance in 2-3 months. Champions on distant flights are sea swallows – the sterna which are flying by annually about 40,000 km.