SWALLOWS. 147 



" ' It appeared in 1822 at Whitehall, on the fifth of June, and 

 departed on the twenty-fifth of July, and these are the usual 

 times of its arrival and disappearance,' " 



Audubon states, but where I do not now remember, that the 

 Cliff Swallows were found in New England on the first settle- 

 ment of a certain town in it, many years ago. 



m. TACHYCINETA. 



A. BICOLOR. White-hreasted Sioallow. White-bellied 

 Swallow. A common summer resident nearly throughout 

 New England.* 



a. About six inches long. Lustrous steel green above, f 

 White beneath. 



h. The nest is usually built in a martin-box or other like 

 receptacle, and, in Massachusetts, very rarely in the hole of a 

 tree, as is not unfrequently the case in many other States. 

 The eggs of each set are four or five, $ average .75 X.55 of an 

 inch, and are white, unmarked. Two broods are generally 

 raised. 



c. The White-bellied Swallows usually announce spring to 

 the people of Boston and its vicinity in the first week of April ; 

 but after their arrival they are sometimes obliged, when dis- 

 couraged by the cold, to retreat temporarily southward to a 

 warmer latitude. As our ancestors long since discovered this 

 fact in relation to their Swallows, they have lianded down to us 

 the wise proverb that "one swallow does not make a summer." 

 The White-bellied Swallows return to their winter homes about 

 the middle of September,§ when all the other Swallows have 



* Twenty years ago this Swallow bred t Many breeding- but perhaps imma- 



abundantly over the greater part of tnre females have only a trace of gTeen 



New Eng-land, nesting- chiefly in holes on the upper parts. — W. B. 



in trees in the more northern portions, | Sets of six eg-g-s each are by no 



almost invariably in bird-houses in means uncommon, and I once found a 



Massachusetts and to the southward, nest containing- seven eg-g-s, all of which 



Its numbers in the north have not di- had been laid apparently hy the same 



minished, but throug-hout southern bird. — W. B. 



New England the House Sparrow has § They often occur about Boston in 



long- since driven it from the cities and early October, frequently up to the 



larg-er towns, and it is fast becoming- 10th or 12th and occasionally as late as 



an uncommon summer bird, although the 15th. — W. B. 

 great flights pass and repass through 

 this region during migration. — W. B. 



