CUBAN CLIFF SWALLOW 487 



Florida since, except for one seen by Mr. Scott at the same place a 

 few daj's later in a flock of tree swallows. It is apparently confined 

 to Cuba and the Isle of Pines. 



In naming this race, Barbour and Brooks (1917) describe it as 

 "similar to Petrochelidon fulva fulva from Santo Domingo, but a 

 little larger and differently colored. The Cuban birds show a much 

 greater extension of the fulvous area below and a consequent restric- 

 tion of the white area on the belly. In the Cuban birds the throat 

 and chest are usually more richly colored than in the individuals of 

 true fulva. They also have the rufescent or fulvous area changing 

 gradually into the white or whitish of the mid-ventral region, whereas 

 in the Haitian birds the white is clearer and purer and the boundary 

 of the fulvous zone is quite sharply defined." 



Dr. Barbour (1923) writes of its habits: 



In Cuba they arrive in late February and gather in large flocks about the 

 caves in which they nest. Occasionally abandoned buildings are occupied, or 

 even the recesses of a deep veranda, but caves, sometimes open but equally 

 often deep and dark, are the usual breeding-places chosen. A favorite spot is 

 where the river disappears into a limestone cavern right in the town of San 

 Antonio de los Banos. This was an impossible place to shoot, but Brooks and 

 I found that, when we crept into the cave at night and then flashed an electric 

 torch, the birds came in swarms clinging to our hats and clothes, as photo- 

 tropic as moths. We soon had plenty, chosen by hand. A nesting-place near 

 Bolondron is in a deep, steep, almost perpendicular, tubular cave mouth, which 

 at first looked like a haunt for bats but nothing else. The old wooden hotel 

 at Herradura had a few nesting under the eaves, and swarms inhabit the great 

 caverns under Moro Castle, perched at the mouth of the bottle harbor of 

 Santiago de Cuba. The nest is of mud, mixed with grasses and feathers, 

 and is not so enclosed as with our Cliff Swallows. 



"W. E. Clyde Todd (1916) regards it as "a summer resident only" 

 on the Isle of Pines, "of which the winter habitat is still unknown." 

 He says that in the Caballos Mountains, as early as April 6, "the birds 

 were observed going in and out of holes in the cliffs near the tops of 

 the mountains, where they evidently had eggs or young. These nest- 

 ing-places were quite inaccessible by ordinary means, but a little 

 later, in the Casas Mountains, some pairs were found with nests 

 onl}' about twenty feet up the face of an exposed cliff." 



I have seen only three eggs of this subspecies; these are quite 

 evenly sprinkled with very fine dots, a type often seen in other eggs 

 of this species and in eggs of our common cliff swallow. The meas- 

 urements of these three eggs are 20.9 by 14.6, 20.9 by 14.6, and 20.8 

 by 15.0 millimeters. 



DISTRIBUTION 



Range. — This species is not regularly migratory and appears to be 

 confined to the Caribbean region and eastern Mexico, casually to 

 southern Texas and accidental in southern Florida. 



