Reedbeds are regularly favoured. The birds give spectacular pre-roosting displays, bunching tougher and towering higher and even higher before swerving and swirling en masse before swooping low over the reeds. Swallows are able to obtain food while migrating. Unlike most other passerines they are diurnal migrants, travelling at almost ground level and skimming the waves whereas most migrants move at a height of several thousand feet. To drink, these graceful birds skim low over the surface scooping water with open mouths.
Swallows usually nest close to man.
On occasions pairs occupy the same building with nests as close as a yard apart. In dry conditions when wet mud is difficult to obtain swallows will take over old nests of other birds including house martins and blackbirds. Swallows do not often settle on the ground except when collecting mud for nest-building. Then they appear nervous, using a shuffling walk as they gather at muddy dyke edges where cattle come to drink. Swallows rarely settle in large trees, except on bare long dead branches.