334 THE ROUGH-WINGED SWALLOW. - 
No. 128. 
ROUGH-WINGED SWALLOW. 
A. O. U. No. 617. Stelgidopteryx serripennis (Aud.). 
Description.—4dult: \Warm brownish gray or snuff-brown, including throat 
and breast; thence passing insensibly below to white of under tail-coverts; wings 
fuscous. Young birds exhibit some rusty edging of the feathers above, especially 
on the wings, and lack the peculiar, recurved hooks on the edge of the outer 
primary. Size a little larger than the next. Length 5.00-5.75 (127-146.1) ; wing 
4.30 (109.2) ; tail 1.85 (47); bill from nostril .21 (5.3). 
Recognition Marks.—Medium Swallow size; throat not white; warmish 
brown coloration, and brownish suffusion below fading to white on belly. It is 
easy to distinguish between this and the succeeding species if a little care is taken 
to note the general pattern of underparts. 
Nesting.—WNest, in crevices of cliffs, at end of tunnels in sand banks, or in 
crannies of bridges, etc.; made of leaves, grasses, feathers, and the like,—bulky 
or compact according to situation. Eggs, 4-8, white. Av. size, .74x.51 (18.8x 
13). Season: May 20-June 5, June 20-July 10; two broods. 
General Range.—United States at large, north to Connecticut, southern On- 
tario, southern Minnesota, British Columbia, ete., south thru Mexico to Costa 
Rica. Breeds thruout United States range and south in Mexico. 
Range in Washington.—Summer resident, of general distribution, save in 
mountains, thruout the State. More common east of the mountains, where it 
has taken a great fancy to banks of irrigating ditches, especially where abrupt. 
Migrations.—S pring: First week in April; Tacoma, April 3, 1905, April 6, 
1906 and 1908. Fall: c. Sept. 1. 
Authorities.—Cotyle serripennis, Bonap. Baird, Rep. Pac. R. R. Surv. IX. 
pts il. 1858), 3140. C&S. Le) a Rh Rage, 
Specimens.—(U. of W.) Prov. P. B. E. 
IT not infrequently happens that some oversight, or want of discrimina- 
tion, on the part of early observers condemns a species to long obscurity or 
unending misapprehension. ‘The Bank Swallow was at once recognized by the 
pioneer naturalists of America as being identical with the well-known 
European bird, but it was not till 1838 that Audubon distinguished its super- 
ficially similar but structurally different relative, the Rough-wing. The cloak 
of obscurity still clings to the latter, altho we begin to suspect that it may 
from the first have enjoyed its present wide distribution East as well as West. 
Hence, in describing it, we take the more familiar Bank Swallow as a point 
of departure, and say that it differs thus and so and so. 
In the first place it has those curious little hooklets on the edge of the 
wing (especially on the outer edge of the first primary )—nobody knows what 
they are for. They surely cannot be of service in enabling the bird to cling to 
