TREE SWALLOW 397 



spots in the marsh, and on the gray faces of the hills. Other multi- 

 tudes were in the bushes and low trees, literally loading them. 

 Every few minutes a detachment would rise into the air like a cloud, 

 and anon settle down again." 



We often see tree swallows using the sea beach as a path of 

 migration, flying either over the sand itself or over the ocean a short 

 distance from the shore. As they course along they sometimes swoop 

 playfully at a shorebird, put it to flight, and chase it, twisting and 

 dodging, rising and darting down in unison with it, at the same time 

 continuing their southerly course. 



Years ago Walter Faxon and I watched about 500 tree swallows 

 circling around the steeple of a church at Ipswich, Mass. It was in 

 the latter part of an afternoon in mid-September at the height of the 

 swallow migration. Suddenly their haphazard flight changed to 

 an orderly procession in which about half the birds wheeled in a great 

 spiral and, mounting high in the air, sailed away due south. 



Winter. — Alfred M. Bailey (1928) says of the tree swallow on the 

 gulf coast of Louisiana in the winter : "Very common over the marsh, 

 where thousands were seen at once." 



John J. Elliott (1939), who watched a little company of 28 tree 

 swallows through the fall and winter of 1937-38 on Long Island, 

 N. Y., found that the majority of the birds survived, although the 

 locality is far to the north of the normal winter range. He says: 



I decided to give this flock, which to all appearances was going to winter, 

 as much of my time as possible, and to learn of their winter habits and 

 peculiarities. To this end I made 78 trips and spent 131^^ hours. The fre- 

 quent trips had the advantage of permitting me to observe the actions of the 

 birds in many types of weather. I found cold rains, windy and snowy weather, 

 extremely discouraging for flying birds, and after hours of watching, saw not a 

 bird in the air. During these periods they remained in their sheltered situa- 

 lions, chiefly north of the pond, subsisting principally on bayberries. Cloudy 

 days, especially if cold, also discouraged them to a certain extent from taking 

 the air. In fact, I found that, generally, the brighter the sun, the more I 

 saw of flying birds, and the warmer the sun and surrounding air, the higher 

 tboir flight, both proportionately, except during windy days. At no time did 

 they use telephone wires or any high exiwsed perch, as in summer ; no long 

 flights high in the upper air. * * * 



They are given to much resting in sunny sheltered places, in little huddled 

 groups of four or five birds each, and resort to low broken stulis of bayberry 

 bushes, strong blackberry canes, squatting on the sand, or on boards imbedded 

 in the sand. They are usually silent but on occasion utter a cheery, reedy, 

 double-noted twitter when sunning themselves and in moderate weather. 



[Author's note: Since the above was written, accounts have been 

 published of the great mortality among tree swallows and other birds 

 during the "big freeze" in southern Florida during January 1940. 

 Bayard H. Christy (1940) writes: 



On the morning of January 28, 1940, after ten days of north wind and con- 

 tinued cold, the temperature at Coconut Grove, Florida, fell below the freez- 



