504 BULLETIN 179, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



menace. Various means are resorted to in attempting to drive out 

 these invaders such as shooting, noises, water-cures, etc., but it is often 

 hard to make an impression, and more than one martin colony has 

 been lost. 



, Adverse weather bulks rather largely in a martin's life at times. 

 Martins are very susceptible to cold, and unseasonable spells of it play 

 havoc with them. After a cold spell has depleted a colony, it is 

 usually a long while before they return to that locality. It is, of 

 course, a lack of food supply as well as the weather itself that reacts 

 detrimentally on the birds in these cases. An insectivorous bird's 

 digestion is very rapid and demands that it be more or less con- 

 stantly eating, and two or three days of severe cold so eliminates 

 insects that starvation not infrequently occurs. These spells some- 

 times take place as late as mid- April. 



In the Charleston area, where I have lived all my life, sudden 

 cold, which is very rare in spring, sometimes affects the martins. 

 My old friend Arthur T. Wayne (1910) states that he has known 

 the species to be affected seriously only once. He says that "on 

 Tuesday morning, February 14, 1899, the temperature registered 6° 

 above zero at Charleston * * * followed again by a very severe 

 cold wave accompanied by snow. * * * Qn April 14 and 15, 

 1907, however, large numbers died from cold and starvation during 

 the prevalence of gales and cold weather." One of these spells 

 provided Wayne with a very beautiful albinistic specimen of this 

 species, which he found dead under his "swallowhouse" as he 

 invariably called it. 



[ Kains, cold ones or even protracted ones in warm weather, occa- 

 sionally wreak havoc. F. B. Horton, of Brattleboro, Vt. (1903), 

 writes that in June 1903 long rains resulted in the death of 30 young 

 and 2 adults in a colony there. The remaining martins deserted 

 the place leaving 12 unhatched eggs. 



Forbush (1929) quotes Dr. Brewer as describing a cold rain spell 

 that eliminated martins in "eastern Massachusetts" and as a result 

 none have returned there "to this day." The rain of June 1903, 

 mentioned in the Horton note above, extended into Massachusetts 

 and is mentioned also by Forbush, who says that it destroyed "most 

 of the Martins in Massachusetts and contiguous parts of New Eng- 

 land." He brings out the fact that when martins do come back 

 after such a spell to the locality they find their houses occupied by 

 English sparrows. He also adds that excessive heat and vermin 

 constitute enmies of this species. The latter at times kill the young 

 birds outright. Heat, in the restricted space of a martin house, 

 utterly exposed to the sun as it is, must be a factor certainly. One 



