LXXIV 



BANK SWALLOW; SAND MARTIN 

 616. Riparia riparia 



These little Swallows, only five inches long and of a 

 lustreless brown color on the breast and back, with a 

 white belly, are birds of wide distribution and are among 

 the few birds not known as " water birds" that colonize 

 during the breeding season. They are fond of banks 

 bordering streams or in close proximity to marshes, and 

 nest in holes which they excavate in the ground, laying 

 from two to four spotless white eggs. 



Bordering the flats of the Missouri Eiver, near Kan- 

 sas City, there is an immense loess deposit, one hundred 

 feet thick. In constructing a railroad, a deep cut was 

 made through this firmly packed, but granular mass. It 

 is an ideal place for Bank Swallows to build their nests. 

 A colony of several hundred annually congregates there. 

 The tunnels of the Swallows are from two to three feet 

 deep, and only a few inches apart, making the face of this 

 dirt wall look like a well shot-up target on a rifle range. 

 (Fig. 111.) 



These birds are certainly accurate marksmen. In 

 their headlong dives at a terrific pace they hit the " bull's- 

 eye," so to speak, with every shot, so that the face of 

 the target looks as if a machine gun were assaulting it. 



Bank Swallows are great moth and mosquito catch- 

 ers, and while feeding do not, as true perching birds do, 

 approach the nest cautiously, alighting on a limb here 

 and a post there before delivering the food morsel to the 

 young. Like an express train entering a tunnel they 

 plunge into the dark passages and are out of sight. 



In company with Professor A. E. Shirling, I visited 

 this colony of Bank Swallows. Elsewhere, during the 

 feeding time of the young, a visitor rarely hears such a 

 chattering as we heard ; every hour of the day there were 

 many heavily loaded trains with all their rattle and with 

 engines belching smoke and live cinders, passing within 



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