Bn ID 



had built under the eaves, but this bird has no 

 fancy for the inside of a building. How birds 

 so similar in their general habits and not found 

 fighting, species against species, should have come 

 to vary as they do in nesting habits is very curi- 

 ous and, I imagine, an unsolvable problem. Be- 

 fore the days of barns they took up with hollow 

 trees and caves, it is presumed, quarters they 

 would find strangely cramped and uncomfortable 

 now. It is not improbable that these swallows 

 were by no means so abundant in Indian times 

 as they now are. The changes wrought by civi- 

 lized man in settling a country were certainly 

 conducive to the general welfare of many small 

 birds, by affording safe and convenient nesting 

 sites and materially increasing the food supply. 

 Man unintentionally but unavoidably gathers 

 about him a great variety of plants, that in turn 

 afford lodgment for varied insect life, and this at- 

 tracts and sustains bird life. As an instance, no 

 natural conditions were ever so favorable to many 

 species of birds as is an apple orchard. Even now 

 this is true, when the trees are frequently show- 

 ered with insecticides. Happy the lover of birds 

 who can spend a season near an old orchard; one 

 with plenty of hollow trees. In one such, con- 

 sisting of ninety trees, I found in one year the 

 nests of thirteen species, not counting the nests, 

 three in number, placed upon the ground. 



But what of the birds, other than swallows, that 

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