36 BIRDS OF LA,PLATA 
curiously peering under the eaves, and incessantly 
uttering their gurgling happy notes. 
For a period of a month to six weeks before build- 
ing begins they seem to be holding an incessant 
dispute, reminding one in their scolding tones of a 
colony of contentious English House-Sparrows, only 
the Swallow has a softer, more varied voice, and 
frequently, even when hotly quarrelling, he pauses 
to warble out his pretty little song, with its sound 
like running water. However many eligible chinks 
and holes there may be, the contention is always 
just as great amongst them, and is doubtless referable 
to opposing claims to the best places. The excited 
twittering, the incessant striving of two birds to 
alight on the same square inch of wall, the perpetual 
chases they lead each other round and round the 
house, always ending exactly where they began, tell 
of clashing interests and of great unreasonableness 
on the part of some amongst them. By-and-by the 
quarrel assumes a more serious aspect ; friends and 
neighbours have apparently intervened in vain; all 
the arguments of which Swallows are capable have 
been exhausted, and, a compromise of claims being 
more impossible than ever, fighting begins. Most 
vindictively do the little things clutch each other and 
fall to the earth twenty times an hour, where they 
often remain struggling for a long time, heedless of 
the screams of alarm their fellows set up above them ; 
for often, while they thus lie on the ground punishing 
each other, they fall an easy prey to some wily pussy 
who has made herself acquainted with their habits, 
