SWALLOWS. 149 



d. Their notes are rather more eccentric and guttural than 

 those which I have already mentioned, but are equally full of 

 animation. 



IV. CLIVICOLA. 



A. RIPARIA. Bank Swallow. Sand Martin. Locally 

 common throughout New England.* 



a. About five inches long. Upper parts, and a band 

 across the breast, dull brown. Under parts, white. 



b. The nest is constructed of a few loose materials, and is 

 placed at the bottom of burrows dug out by the birds. These 

 excavations are from fifteen to twenty-four inches deep, and are 

 made in sand-banks, usually those on the sea-shore or near 

 other bodies of water, but sometimes those on the roadsides 

 or in other situations. The eggs average .68 X.50 of an inch, 

 and are white ; being almost exactly like those of the White- 

 bellied Swallow, though smaller. Two sets of four or five are 

 generally laid in the course of the season, of which the first 

 appears here in the latter part of May. 



c. The Bank Swallows are in New England the most 

 plainly colored of their family, and the only ones who retain 

 here their former habits of nesting. They migrate at the same 

 time as the Cliff Swallows, but I have never observed them in 

 company with those birds. They may be seen in their sum- 

 mer haunts flying either over the surface of land and water or 

 at some height in the air, though rarely very far above the 

 ground. They fly much like the other Swallows, though per- 

 haps less steadily and with less sailing, but they seldom wan- 

 der far from the banks in which their nests are placed. They 

 are found throughout New England, and much further to the 

 northward, but are confined to localities, both because of their 

 disposition to colonize, and the necessity of their selecting a 

 place where the earth is of a character suitable to their pur- 

 poses. 



As it is impossible for them to burrow in all kinds of earth, 

 their choice of a summer home is undoubtedly influenced very 



* A summer resident, breeding in colonies, often comprising hundreds of 

 individuals, wherever suitable sand or earth banks are to be found. W. B. 



