Tree Swallow (Tachycineta bicolor)

Tree Swallow (Tachycineta bicolor)

The body of the the tree swallow is a radiant white, the back a medium to very dark blue. The feathers of the tree swallow, unlike those of the common house martin, also include a tinge of green, especially those of the female birds. The feathers are of an iridescent colour, especially those of the male birds. The wings and the tail, that is forked just slightly, are black when viewed from the top as is the rim of the wings on the lower side and a mask along the eyes. The rest of the underside of the wings is brown.

This is in stark contrast to the rather dull looking young birds which are of a flat brown on the upperparts and only in some cases a greyish neckband adds a very little something.

My Feathers *

You may find them quite ordinary, but look at your own skin with the few hairs on it. Look at the pelt of a guinea pig, the scales of a carp, or the cold skin of a frog – none of these outdo our feathers in terms of complexity, lightness, and beauty. (...)
Just take one of our feathers in your hand, put it under a strong magnifying glass, or better yet, a microscope, and look at the structure. You will find an ingenious combination of strength, elasticity and lightness (“as light as a feather”) that simply can’t be imitated, even by your aeroplane designers.
From each side of the quill in my feathers, several hundred parallel branches reach out. A crane’s feather has about 650 of these branches. You could see these with your naked eye, and even count them, if you had to. But from each of these 650 branches, another several hundred pairs of “rays” radiate out, both upward and downward. There are in total, more than one-and-a-half million of them.
To keep the air from ineffectually streaming through these branches extending from each side of the quill, I need a special device to fasten the hundreds of feather branches together and yet keep them elastic. My Creator arranged this by giving me a special kind of
zip. On the underside of each little branch piece, there are hundreds of rounded, and twisted loops. In the feather of a crane, there are 600 of these distal barbules. On exactly the opposite side of the next branch down, there are 600 little hooks, which fit into these
loops exactly. The miracle of it all is that the hooks in the loops can slide back and forth, enabling the feather to broaden or to contract again. That’s important for me when it comes to soaring. And if this little zip device comes open, I can easily put it back together with my beak. Don’t I have a wonderful Creator!

 

The swallow continues its story: My Wings

* quotes from the book "If Animals Could Talk"

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