444 BULLETIN 17 9, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Dr. Samuel S. Dickey writes to me that while staying at a small 

 frame summer hotel built for the use of fisherman, at Beach Haven, 

 N. J., he noted a number of barn swallows flying about and disap- 

 pearing under the hotel building. "Since the building was erected on 

 piles, 6 feet over deep water, it left a space about 5 feet high under- 

 neath. Here the swallows found ample room for breeding purposes. 

 They were enabled to withdraw on three open sides. When we 

 clambered down among the piles and planks, we caused a shower of 

 birds to evacuate. And there, plastered upon crossed sticks next to 

 the floor, were 15 nests." He visited a colony at Nantasket Beach, 

 near Boston, where they bred under wharves and boat houses over- 

 looking the sea. 



In northern Alaska, about St. Michael and Nome, barn swallows 

 are fairly common and seem to appreciate the advantages of nesting 

 on what few buildings they can find ; if buildings were more numer- 

 ous they would probably increase in numbers. As it is they build 

 their nests under the eaves of buildings, on projecting beams, inside 

 empty houses, and even in the deserted sod houses of the Eskimos. 

 The nests are profusely lined with white ptarmigan feathers, which 

 are plentifully scattered over the tundra after the spring molt. In 

 the Aleutian Islands we did not see any barn swallows west of 

 Unalaska. 



A few unusual nesting sites are worthy of mention. It is hardly 

 to be wondered at that the swallows would continue to incubate and 

 rear their young in a building that was mended after they had started 

 nesting, but that they should continue to build and occupy their nests 

 repeatedly on moving trains or boats is a remarkable illustration of 

 their persistency and confidence, or of the scarcity of more suitable 

 and stationary situations. At least two instances of nesting on mov- 

 ing trains have been reported. Harry S. Swarth (1935) reports that 

 a narrow-gauge train, which carries passengers and freight over a 

 2-mile portage from Lake Tagish to Lake Atlin, British Columbia, 

 provides a home for a pair of barn swallows. He says : 



About the buildings at the Tagish Lake end of the line innumerable Barn 

 and Cliff swallows nest. Under the eaves around one of the larger sheds 

 there is an uninterrupted frieze of the Cliff Swallows' mud nests. But the 

 really interesting feature of this colony lies in the action of a pair, or more 

 properly a succession of pairs, of the Barn Swallow (Himndo erythrogaster) , 

 in nesting on a moving train. For many years past one pair of swallows have 

 built their nests and raised their broods on some part of the train that crosses 

 the portage. They were first commented upon by E. M. Anderson, who, in 

 the annual report of the Provincial Museum of Natural History ("Victoria) for 

 1914, describes the nest as he saw it in one of the coaches. I have seen it 

 on each of the several years that I have visited the region, and in all 

 probability the nesting is an annual occurrence. The train crew take a per- 

 sonal interest in their guests, and for some years the swallows occupied an 



