EUROPEAN SWALLOW 461 



young, to a box that he could move, and eventually the old birds 

 became so tame that he could watch them at close range ; he writes : 



For several days, I had the old Swallows feeding the young with the box 

 resting on my lap. The bird would come to the nest with two, three and 

 sometimes four, small "blue-bottles" in its beak, arranged transversely, one in 

 front of the other. It put one fly into the open mouth of each young one, 

 with extraordinary rapidity, and was off again directly unless it had any 

 excreta to carry away, which delayed it a moment or two. How the bird 

 managed to catch and arrange the flies in its beak in the way it did was a 

 puzzle, but a much greater one was how it got rid of the fly's wings at the last 

 moment before putting it into the young one's mouth. The two wings would 

 fall from the beak of the old bird as if they had been nipped off with some- 

 thing, but as the beak was holding other flies and could not close, it was prob- 

 ably the tongue that did this wonderful trick. Time after time as we bent right 

 over the bird, we saw the wings fall from the fly, but we never saw how they 

 were removed. * * * The bright blue or green, rather small "blue-bottle" 

 was the only insect caught. The old birds used to skim about over a grass 

 field at the back of the summer-house, and catch them there. 



After the young leave the nest, they are fed by their parents for 

 a while, sometimes on the wing, but they soon disperse more or less 

 widely over the surrounding country, and seldom return to breed in 

 the vicinity of their birth, though commonly within a few miles. 



Plumages. — The plumages and molts of the European swallow 

 follow the same sequence as in our barn swallow, though the post- 

 juvenal and postnuptial molts begin before the birds leave for the 

 south. Witherby's Handbook (1920) states that in both adults and 

 young the winter "plumage is acquired by a very gradual moult, 

 commencing in Europe with body feathers and sometimes median 

 and lesser wing-coverts in Aug. (exceptionally July) and continuing 

 in Africa, whence specimens in every month from Sept. to March 

 (exceptionally April) are in various stages of complete moult." 



Food. — Dr. Butler (1896) says: "The food of the Swallow consists 

 largely of gnats, small flies, and ephemerae; but it frequently settles 

 on the roads, or on manure heaps, to search for small dung-beetles; 

 owing to its short legs, its progression on the earth is somewhat 

 awkward, and when hurried it uses its wings to help it along; it 

 usually drinks on the wing, skimming the surface of the water as it 

 glides over." 



Witherby's Handbook (1920) lists: "Insects taken on the wing, 

 chiefly Diptera (Chironomidae, Tifula., Empis, Borhonis., CalUphora., 

 etc.), but also Coleoptera {Curculio^ Eelophorus., Tachimts, Aphodkis, 

 etc.), Hymenoptera (winged ants), Neuroptera {Calopteryx) , and 

 exceptionally Lepidoptera." 



Behavior. — I cannot find in the literature any indication that the 

 behavior of the European swallow differs in any respect from that 

 of our American representative of the species. It has the same 



