The Bank Swallow loi 



The barn swallow, as we have seen, chooses 

 to nest upon the rafters inside the bam, but the 

 eave swallow is content to stay outside under 

 the shelter of a projecting roof. In such a place 

 you find not one, but several or many mud 

 tenements plastered in a row against the wall, 

 for eave swallows are always remarkably so- 

 ciable, even at the nesting season. A photo- 

 graph of a colony I have seen shows one hundred 

 and fifteen nests nearly all of which touch one 

 another. 



Although so often noticed circling about 

 barns, you may know by the rusty patch on the 

 lower part of his steel-blue back, the crescent- 

 shaped white mark on his forehead, and the 

 notched, not deeply forked tail, that the eave 

 swallow is not the bam swallow, which it other- 

 wise resembles. 



THE BANK SWALLOW 



Called also: Sand Martin; Sand Swallow 



Perhaps you have seen a sand bank some- 

 where, probably near a river or pond, where 

 the side' of the bank was filled with holes as if 

 a small cannon had been trained against it as 

 a target. In and out of the holes fly the 

 smallest of the swallows, with no lovely me- 

 tallic blue or glistening buff in their dull plum- 



