442 BULLETIN 17 9, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



other's plumage in happy love-making. Copulation may take place 

 at once, or they may fly off together to choose which of their old 

 nests or nesting sites they will use. 



Nesting. — ^We naturally think of the barn swallow as nesting in 

 barns, and such has seemed to be their preference, where suitable old- 

 fashioned barns can still be found. But when the red men roamed 

 this continent, before the white men invaded it, there were no barns, 

 and the swallows had to build their nests in such natural conditions 

 as would suit their needs, giving them security for their nests and 

 protection from their enemies. They found security and protection 

 in rocky caves, in crevices in rocky cliffs, on shelves of projecting 

 rocks where some protection from above was afforded, and even in 

 holes or natural cavities in cutbanks. Dawson and Bowles (1909) 

 thus describe one such primitive nesting site at the head of Lake 

 Chelan, Wash.: 



The shores of the lake near its head are very precipitous, since Castle 

 Mountain rises to a height of over 8,000 feet within a distance of two miles. 

 Along the shore-line in the side of the cliffs, which continue several hundred 

 feet below the water, the waves have hollowed out crannies and caves. In 

 one of these latter, which penetrates the granite wall to a depth of some 

 twenty feet, I found four or five Barn Swallows' nests. * * * Other nests 

 were found in neighboring crannies outside the cave. * * * 



Mr. F. S. Merrill, of Spokane, reports the Barn Swallow as nesting along 

 the rocky walls of Hangman's Creek, in just such situations as Cliff Swallows 

 would choose ; and back in '89, I found a few associated with Violet-greens along 

 the Natchez Cliffs, in Yakima County. 



A colony of some twenty pairs may be found yearly nesting on Destruction 

 Island, in the Pacific Ocean. A few of them still occupy wave-worn crannies 

 in the sand-rock, overlooking the upper reaches of the tide, but most of the 

 colony have taken refuge under the broad gables of the keepers' houses. 



O. J. Murie has sent me the following quotation from Ernest 

 Ingersoll's "Knocking Eound the Kockies," describing the primitive 

 nesting habits of the barn swallow, as he found them at Hot Sul- 

 phur Springs, Colo., in 1874 : 



The niches in the rocks were occupied by large colonies of barn-swallows. 

 * * ■" Sometimes the niches in the lime-rock (the whole mass of which had 

 been built up of deposits from the mineral waters) were so close together 

 that there would be half a dozen in a square yard ; yet every one had its 

 burnt-breast tenants, and the twittering silenced the gurgle and sputter of the 

 rapid stream at the ledge's base. The floor of each niche was hollowed out, 

 so that it only required to be softly carpeted to constitute it a i)erfect nest. 

 For this grass-stems and a few large feathers were used, precisely as in our 

 Eastern barns. But here the birds had greatly economized labor by occupying 

 the niches, for they needed not to build the firm underpinning and stout high 

 walls which become necessary in the barn, or on an exposed rock shelf, to 

 prevent the eggs and young from rolling out; all these happy birds had to do 

 was to furnish a home already made. 



