Swallows are small birds with dark backs glittering with blue, rust-coloured throats, white bellies and very long forked, streamer-like tails.
You ought to look in the air - Swallows are fabulous flyers. In this they are very similar to swifts, although you should remember that swifts are found in open areas especially where there are fountains, sprinklers in farmlands or water borne areas, similar with swallows.
Swallows are small to medium birds with dark backs glittering with blue, rust-coloured throats, white bellies and very long forked, streamer-like tails. Their legs are very short and weak and feathered in some species; their toes are small and slender.
Their plumage is black or brown dorsally, often with blue or green gloss, ventrally black, white, brown or rufous. The sexes are similar. Swallows are aerial feeders on insects and most of them are gregarious, at least when not breeding. They nest solitarily or colonially and nest in a pad of feathers and grass in chamber at the end of self made burrows in banks or in level ground, holes in trees or in mud nest (half cup or bowl tunnel) under overhang. They lay 1-6 eggs and both parents care for the young ones.
Distribution is worldwide. Most swallows are Palaearctic migrants including Barn Swallows visiting South Africa from September, mostly arriving in October November and living us in March to May for greener pastures in Europe and parts in the northern hemisphere. Barn Swallow is found almost anywhere in South Africa outside of forest, especially in common over water, open grassland, cultivated lands, pastures and vleis.
Barn Swallows are highly gregarious and flocks scatter by day. They roost at night in reedbeds in flocks of hundreds of thousands or even millions of birds (over 3 million birds were registered at Mount Moreland where the new King Shaka Airport in Durban is built now) and also roosts in maize fields.