33 2 ALLEN'S NATURALIST'S LIBRARY. 



Adult Male. Above glossy purplish blue-black, the wings 

 and tail blackish, with a slight gloss of green externally ; head 

 like the back ; the forehead deep rufous ; ear-coverts purplish- 

 blue ; cheeks and throat deep rufous ; the rest of the under 

 surface pale rufous-buff; on the fore-neck a collar of purplish- 

 blue ; bill and feet black ; iris dark brown. Total length, 

 7-3 inches; culmen, 0-35 ; wing, 5-05; tail, 4-0; tarsus, 0-5. 



Adult Female. Differs from the adult only in having the 

 outer tail-feathers rather shorter, and in not being so rufescent 

 underneath. Total length, 6*6 inches; wing, 4-65. 



Young. Duller than the adults, and not so glossy ; the 

 rufous frontal mark much smaller; many of the wing coverts 

 and the feathers of the lesser rump and upper tail-coverts with 

 rufescent edges. 



Range in Great Britain. A regular summer visitor to every 

 part of our islands, but breeding less frequently in the north. 



Range outside the British Islands. - Found universally over 

 Europe, even to the high north. It breeds as far as the Yenesei 

 Valley, and in a few places in the Himalayas, being replaced 

 in China and the far east by an allied species of Swallow, 

 Hirundo gutturalis. Both species winter in the south, H. 

 rustica in Africa and India, a few further east still ; the 

 winter ranges of the two Chimney-Swallows overlap, 

 as H. gutturalis winters in Southern China, the Moluccas, 

 the Burmese and Malayan countries, and the eastern portion 

 of the Indian Peninsula. 



Habits. The ways of the Chimney-Swallow have been often 

 described and are known to every one, the bird's graceful 

 flight being observed in the open fields, and, more rarely, in 

 the neighbourhood of towns, where, however, they often build 

 in the chimneys of old buildings. Mr. Edward Bartlett has 

 related how he discovered Swallows' nests with young birds 

 eight feet down a narrow "shaft of a chimney in an old 

 Elizabethan mansion at Maidstone. All kinds of other situa- 

 tions are chosen by the bird for its nest : this being sometimes 

 on a beam in a shed, and at others in places of the most 

 eccentric description, such as on the china shade over an 

 electric lamp in a stable, etc. 



