1 66 On the permanent residence of 



A third party arrived a few days after, and immediately 

 commenced building. This was completed in one week ; at 

 the end of which time, thirty nests hung clustered like so 

 many gourds, each having a neck two inches in length, for the 

 admission of the bird. 



On the 27th of July, the young were able to follow their 

 parents. They all exhibited the white frontlet, and were 

 scarcely distinguishable in any part of the plumage from the 

 old birds. On the 1st of August they all assembled near 

 their nests, mounted about three hundred feet in the air, and 

 at 10'oclock in the morning they vanished, flying in a loose 

 general body, in a due north direction. They returned the 

 same evening about dusk, and continued these excursions, no 

 doubt to exercise their powers, until the 3d, when uttering a 

 farewell cry, they shaped the same course at the same hour, 

 and finally disappeared. 



Shortly after their departure, I was informed that several 

 hundreds of their nests were attached to the court-house, at 

 the mouth of the Kentucky river. They had commenced 

 building them in 1815. A person likewise informed me, that 

 along the cliffs of the Kentucky, he had seen many bunches 

 as he termed them, of these nests, attached to the naked 

 shelving rocks overhanging that river. 



Facts and Observations connected with the permanent resi- 

 dence of Swallows in th^ United States. By John I. 

 Audubon. Read August 11th 1824. 



Being extremely desirous of settling the long agitated 

 question, respecting the emigration or supposed torpidity 

 of the swallow, I embraced every opportunity of examining 

 their habits, of carefully noting their arrival and disappear- 

 ance, and of recording every fact connected with their 



