424 NESTING OF THE VIOLET-GREEN SWALLOW 



responding altitudes, generally nesting in the wonted wood- 

 pecker-holes, but sometimes also in holes in rocks, in company 

 with White-throated Swifts. Eidgway has given us our best 

 accounts of this rock-building, which I have myself never 

 witnessed. The birds, he says, were abundant during May at 

 Pyramid Lake, Nevada, where they were observed to enter the 

 fissures of the calcareous tufa cliffs, where they doubtless had 

 nests. In July he saw them again in the limestone caSons of 

 the Kuby Mountains, associated with Cliff Swallows and the 

 Swifts just mentioned. Here their nests were in horizontal 

 fissures of the rock, and mostly inaccessibe. Two, however, 

 were in places admitting the hand ; and these were found to be 

 masses of sticks and straws, lined with feathers. One of these 

 contained five eggs ; the other, three broken eggs and the dead 

 parent. The writer continues with a pertinent remark on the 

 general subject : — " Although other observers, whose statements 

 we do not in the least doubt, have described the habits of this 

 bird as arboreal, like those of the White-bellied Swallow 

 (T. hicolor) and the Purple Martin, we never found it so in any 

 locality during our trip, it being everywhere a strictly Saxi- 

 coline species, and an associate of Panyptila saxatilis, Petro- 

 chelidon lunifrons, and Rirundo horreorum rather than of the 

 species named, and to be found only where precipitous rocks, 

 affording suitable fissures, occurred." 



This is enough to settle the question we asked each other 

 for some years, Where does the Violet-green breed ? We havci 

 here simply a hole-hreeder, indifferent whether the cavity it 

 occupies be tree or rock ; and we need not be surprised to learn 

 any day that it has been found nestling in a bank of earth, in 

 a natural excavation, or even in a Kingfisher's or Bank or 

 Eough-winged Swallow's hole. One thing, however : it has 

 never learned the plasterer's trade, at which the Cliff and Barn 

 Swallows are such clever artisans ; and yet it has been stated 

 by me, in the " Birds of the Northwest ", p. 88, on the authority 

 of Mr. T. M. Trippe, to have been found '•'■nesting under the eaves 

 of houses^ like the Cliff' Swallow", the fact being adduced to 

 show that, like most others of its tribe, this bird had at length 

 paid its compliments to human civilization. The details of 

 the circumstance had not been communicated to me in 1874; 

 but Mr. Trippe yesterday (March 17, 1878) visited my study, 

 and we had some conversation on the subject. He described 

 the nests, in which Violet-green Swallows certainly had their 



