Barn Swallow

The Barn Swallow is a sleek, acrobatic flyer with deeply forked tail streamers and a burnished orange throat that's been sharing human structures for thousands of years. They build their iconic mud-cup nests on barn rafters, porch eaves, and bridge undersides, making them one of the most closely associated birds with human habitation worldwide. Barn Swallows catch all of their food on the wing — flies, mosquitoes, and beetles snatched in mid-air at remarkable speed. Watching them hunt low over a meadow or pond at dusk, banking and diving with effortless precision, is one of summer's great natural spectacles. They migrate to Central and South America each fall, returning to the same nest site year after year.

Barn Swallows are aerial insect hunters that catch their food on the wing — they almost never visit feeders. Flies, mosquitoes, and flying beetles make up nearly their entire diet. The only feeder product with any chance of attracting them is insect-based suet crumbled on an open platform, but expectations should be kept very low.

Traditional feeders won't work for Barn Swallows. If they nest on your property (often on barn eaves or porch overhangs), placing crumbled Bird Grub suet on a low open tray near their nesting site is your only real option. Focus instead on providing nesting habitat — a small shelf under an eave gives them a perfect foundation for their iconic mud nests.

Barn Swallows nest almost exclusively on human structures — barn eaves, porch overhangs, garage interiors, and bridge undersides. A small wooden shelf (15cm × 15cm) mounted under an eave gives them a nesting platform. They build mud nests, so having a patch of damp soil or a mud puddle nearby provides building material. Keep doors or windows to outbuildings open during nesting season (April–August) if you want to host them. Flying insect populations are their food supply, so avoiding insecticides benefits them enormously.