BANK SWALLOW 333 



pendicular and sandy part (I sit and watch them within 

 three or four rods) and close to the upper part of it. 

 While I am looking, they all suddenly with one consent 

 take to wing, and circle over the hillside and meadow, 

 as if they chose to work at making their holes a little 

 while at a time only. I find the holes on an average 

 about a foot deep only as yet, some but a few inches. 



May 12, 1856. I see, in the road beyond Luther 

 Hosmer's, in different places, two bank swallows which 

 were undoubtedly killed by the four days' northeast rain 

 we have just had. 



May 13, 1856. In the swallows' holes behind Den- 

 nis's, I find two more dead bank swallows, and one on 

 the sand beneath, and the feathers of two more which 

 some creature has eaten. This makes at least seven dead 

 bank swallows in consequence of the long, cold north- 

 east rain. A male harrier, skimming low, had nearly 

 reached this sandpit before he saw me and wheeled. 

 Could it have been he that devoured the swallows ? 



The swallows were 10|-f alar extent, 4| inches 

 long; a wing 4|+ by 1|. Above they were a light 

 brown on their backs, wings blackish, beneath white, 

 with a dark-brown band over the breast and again white 

 throat and side of neck ; bill small and black ; reddish- 

 brown legs, with long, sharp, slender claws. It chanced 

 that each one of two I tried weighed between five and 

 six sixteenths of an ounce, or between five and six drams 

 avoirdupois. This seems to be the average weight, or 

 say six drams because they have pined a little. A man 

 who weighs one hundred and fifty pounds weighs sixty- 

 four hundred times as much as one. The wing of one 



