SWALLOW. 247 



coast passage. There is a single report for June from Cheshire, 

 but the bird was only seen and the description of its plumage, 

 especially of an almost black head, does not sound convincing, 

 although the B.O.U. Committee apparently accept it. The 

 alarm note of the Red-breasted Flycatcher is pink^ pink, 

 suggesting the call of the Chaffinch to Seebohm. 



The adult male is ashy brown on the crown and back, bluish 

 grey on the face and neck, warm orange on the chin and throat, 

 and the rest of the under parts shading from buff to white. The 

 eye-rims are white, and the irides dark brown ; the bill is brown 

 and the legs black. The female (upper bird, Plate loi) has no 

 slate or orange, and her under parts are whiter, tinged with buff. 

 Length, 4*5 ins. Wing, 2'65 ins. Tarsus, '68 in. 



Family HIRUNDINID^. The Swallows. 

 Swallow. HirujiUQ rusiica Linn. 



Throughout the Holarctic regions some form of Swallow, 

 nearly related to our well-known bird, occurs as a summer 

 visitor ; our Swallow, sometimes distinguished as the Barn- or 

 Chimney-Swallow (Plate loi), breeds in Europe, north-west 

 Africa and western Asia, and is known to winter in tropical and 

 southern Africa and in India. In Britain the migrations of the 

 Swallow are complicated by extensive passage movements to 

 and from northern and central Europe, noticeable in the west 

 as well as on the eastern seaboard. An emphatic assertion 

 that those birds which nest farthest north winter farthest south 

 needs confirmation ; England is not the most northern limit of 

 the range, yet birds ringed here have been recovered in Natal 

 and the Cape. 



The incoming Swallow attracts as much notice as the loud- 

 voiced Cuckoo as a "harbinger of spring"; the newspaper 

 report of the first Swallow is, as a rule, more correct than that 



