290 SWALLOWS AND MARTINS 



liminary. A large white butterfly, probably the common cabbage one, 

 was seen to disappear suddenly, entombed, as it were, in the throat of 

 a swallow. 1 This easy and rapid interment enables one to realise, 

 better perhaps than by measurement or description, the extent of a 

 swallow's gape. 2 



The act of drinking is often performed by the two species when 

 on the wing, a fact which, like many others concerning these birds, 

 was carefully noted by Gilbert White. "Each species of Hirundo 

 drinks as it flies along, sipping the surface of the water ; but," he adds, 

 " the swallow alone, in general, wasJies on the wing, by dropping into 

 a pool for many times together. In very hot weather house-martins and 

 bank-martins (sand-martins) dip and wash a little." 3 Swallows also 

 drink when perched on the ground in the way usual to birds. 4 

 Probably the same applies to house-martins, but information is 

 lacking. 



II 



It is certain that both swallows and martins return each year, as a 

 rule, to the same place, for on more than one occasion birds have been 

 marked before departure by attaching to their legs either pieces of 

 silk or parchment, or else metal rings, and by the same token recog- 

 nised on their return. In one instance, mentioned in the Field of 

 1862, a male swallow was caught, and a piece of parchment tied to its 

 leg. This was done in 1859. The bird made its appearance at the 

 same nest in 1860, 1861, and 1862, the date of the record. 5 In another 

 instance a house-martin, ringed on 15th July 1906, was caught three 

 years later in the same month, not exactly in the same place, for it 



and the method of capture. Robert Newstead, in the Food of Some British Birds (p. 40), 

 notes that large nocturnal moths, disturbed by haymakers, are frequently caught by swallows 

 and martins. The species usually taken are Triphaena pronuba, T. orbona, and Agrotis 

 exclamationis. 



1 E. Selous, Bird Life Glimpses, p. 258. 



2 It may here be noted that both species, according to Naumann, regurgitate, in the form of 

 pellets, the hard parts of the insects they swallow. Vogel Mitteleuropaa, iv. 197, 207. 



3 Letter to Barrington, Jan. 29, 1774. 4 Macgillivray, History of Birds, iii. 558. 

 5 Field, 1802, xx. 319. 



