OUR PRICELESS SWALLOWS 



in cavities of trees. Then, in well settled localities, 

 they changed to the bird boxes which kindly disposed 

 people put up for them. But the English Sparrow 

 came and drove them out, and now they have gone 

 back to the hollow trees again. 



Out in North Dakota, I have seen pairs of them 

 flying in and out of hollows in low trees along the 

 snores of rivers and lakes, and I was wishing that I 

 had taken the time to photograph them. So it was 

 pleasant to me to find a colony of them near my home 

 nesting in stubs in the overflowed woodland where I 

 have told of the woodpeckers nesting so abundantly. 

 Some of the stubs which they had chosen stood out in 

 pretty deep water and the holes were rather high up. 

 I was standing on the "corduroy" roadway across the 

 swamp and wondering how in the world I was going to 

 work it to get some pictures, when I saw a Tree Swallow 

 fly into a hole near the top of a low stub only about five 

 feet from the water, the stub being only a yard out from 

 the road. I waited two weeks or more till the young 

 were hatched, and then with my reflecting camera and 

 a lot of plate holders, I paid a visit to the nest. The 

 male bird sat on a low branch of another stub, quite 

 near the nest hole, and let me walk quietly up and snap 

 him. He flitted to another stub and I got some more 

 pictures of him. Meanwhile the female flew to the 

 nest with a fly, so I sat down on the edge of the roadway 

 partly behind a bush, with the camera on my knees, 

 aimed at the nest. For a few minutes the birds flew 

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