OF NEW ENGLAND. 141 
(7). Male brightly, female plainly colored.99 Tanagers ; 
certain warblers, finches, and starlings. 
[(8). Plainly colored ;39 with bright crown-patch in both 
sexes, certain flycatchers; with tail brightly tipped, the wax- 
wings. | 
(9). Plainly or dully colored.29 Sexes alike. Thrushes, 
gnatcatchers, titmice, creepers, wrens, wagtails, vireos, shrikes, 
flycatchers, swifts, cuckoos, owls, most of the hawks, certain 
warblers, swallows, finches, starlings, jays, and pigeons. 
(10). Plainly or dully colored.*? Sexes unlike. ‘ Goat- 
suckers,” kingfishers, harriers, and smaller falcons. Perhaps 
also certain finches, the Bobolink, and Blue Crow. 
The swallows are preeminently insectivorous (perching less 
often than any other oscine birds), and consequently migratory. 
They are also preéminently social and consequently gregarious, 
at least very often.. Most of them breed in communities or in 
colonies, to which they return each spring in greater numbers 
than before. These settlements, as I have once or twice ob- 
served among the Bank Swallows, are formed by a very few 
pairs, whose number is often slowly increased from year to 
year. It is probably in this manner that the Cliff Swallows 
have gradually become dispersed over eastern North America, 
where possibly they were once unknown. ‘There are probably 
no birds whose past history would be more interesting than 
that of the swallows. No birds better or more curiously 
exhibit the modifying influence of civilization than these. 
Those kinds who formerly built on cliffs, or in the hollows of 
trees, now build their nests, almost exclusively in Massachu- 
setts, in situations about the buildings of man. It is said by 
Dr. Coues, who quotes from Dr. Rufus Haymond, in ‘The 
American Naturalist,” for June, 1876, that an instance of the 
Bank Swallow using an artificial nest, so to speak, has already. 
occurred. Dr. Haymond says: ‘*The White Water Valley 
39 Black and white, the various browns and grays, are eminently the plain col- 
ors. In this synopsis, however, grayish-blue, olive, olive-green, and even yellow, 
especially in connection with green, are often considered plain colors (chiefly in 
contrast), 
