

OF NEW ENGLAND. 



141 



(7). Male brightly, female plainly colored. 39 Tanagers ; 

 certain warblers, finches, and starlings. 



[(8). Plainly colored; 39 with bright crown-patch in both 

 sexes, certain flycatchers ; with tail brightjy tipped, the wax- 

 wings.] 



(9). Plainly or dully colored. 39 Sexes alike. Thrushes, 

 gnatcatchers, titmice, creepers, wrens, wagtails, vireos, shrikes, 

 flycatchers, swifts, cuckoos, owls, most of the hawks, certain 

 warblers, swallows, finches, starlings, jays, and pigeons. 



(10). Plainly or dully colored. 39 Sexes unlike. ' Goat- 

 suckers," kingfishers, harriers, and smaller falcons. Perhaps 



so certain finches, the Bobolink, and Blue Crow. 



The swallows are preeminently insectivorous (perching less 

 often than any other oscine birds), and consequently migratory. 

 They are also preeminently social and consequently gregarious, 

 at least very often. Most of them breed in communities or in 

 colonies, to which they return each spring in greater numbers 

 than before. These settlements, as I have once or twice ob- 

 served among the Bank Swallows, are formed by a very few 

 pairs, whose number is often slowly increased from year to 

 year. It is probably in this manner that the Cliff Swallows 

 have gradually become dispersed over eastern North America, 

 where possibly they were once unknown. There are probably 

 no birds whose past history would be more interesting than 

 that of the swallows. No birds better or more curiously 

 exhibit the modifying influence of civilization than these. 

 Those kinds who formerly built on cliffs, or in the hollows of 

 trees, now build their nests, almost exclusively in Massachu- 

 setts, in situations about the buildings of man. It is said by 

 Dr. Coues, who quotes from Dr. Rufus Haymond, in "The 

 American Naturalist," for June, 1876, that an instance of the 

 Bank Swallow using an artificial nest, so to speak, has already 

 occurred. Dr. Haymond says: "The White Water Valley 



89 Black and white, the various browns and grays, are eminently the plain col- 

 ors. In this synopsis, however, grayish-blue, olive, olive-green, and even yellow, 

 especially in connection with green, are often considered plain colors (chiefly in 

 contrast). 



