Nesting Habits of the Cliff Swallow 



By MANLEY B TOWNSEND, Nashua. N. H. 



IN a former issue of Bird-Lore I asked the question, "Do Cliff Swallows 

 ever build upon painted barns?" That the query was of more than 

 ordinary interest is attested by the many letters I have received bearing 

 on the subject. Believing that the readers of Bird-Lore will welcome the 

 results of this correspondence, covering a wide territory, from New Bruns- 

 wick to Oregon, I am boiling down and digesting the important facts and here 

 offer them for comparison and study. The value of cooperative effort in deter- 

 mining any fact is here clearly demonstrated. Local conditions often cause 

 local habits. Only comparative study over a wide area can give conclusive 

 testimony. 



Wm. J. Cartwright of Williamstown, Mass., writes: Up in the hill town 

 of Savoy, Mass., a typical backward New England farm community where 

 I chanced to visit this past summer, I found great numbers of these birds. 

 One colony had thirty nests and another twenty-eight, all of which had young 

 birds in at the time. Others had fifteen or more nests and the remains of 

 many former nests. In every case they were on unpainted barns. In one case 

 the farmer had accumulated enough money to paint three sides of his barn, 

 yet the colony of about thirty pairs of Swallows still built their nests on the 

 remaining unpainted side where they have built for a number of years. It will 

 be interesting to see if, when the remaining side is painted, they seek new 

 quarters. 



But I did find one exception. On one painted barn I found five nests, 

 three of which were occupied. The barn was built of rough unfinished boards 

 and painted red. They were on the east side of the barn, directly over the 

 barnyard, where the old birds spent a good deal of their time catching the 

 many insects about the damp yard. It is significant that this was an excep- 

 tionally small colony for that locality, all others being at least three times as 

 large. Several hundred yards on either side of this barn there were unpainted 

 barns, but there were no nests of Swallows on them. These barns were on 

 abandoned farms, or were used for the storing of hay, and so no cattle were 

 about them to draw the food-supply of the Swallows. 



Has anybody else noted a like circumstance in regard to these Swallows 

 and their nesting-places? 



Mrs. G. E. Barton, of Holland Patent, N. Y., writes that when she was a 

 child in a pioneer town, from 1876 to 1880, at Glyndon, Minn., she used to 

 see "thousands of Cliff Swallows' nests on painted buildings. The N. P. R. R. 

 reception house was 200 feet long and painted white. It harbored Swallows 

 the whole length, and sometimes nests overlapped. The same was true of the 

 schoolhouse and other buildings." It is not stated whether or no the boards 

 to which the nests were fastened were painted. 



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