CLIFF SWALLOW. 337 



GENUS PETROCHELIDON CABANIS. 

 PETROCHELIDON LUNIFRONS (SAY.). 



246. Cliff Swallow. (612) 



Lustrous steel-blue ; forehead, whitish or brown ; rump, rufous ; chin, 

 throat and sides of head, chestnut ; a steel-blue spot on the throat ; breast, 

 sides and generally a cervical collar, rusty-gray, whitening on the belly. 

 Young : Sufficiently similar. Length, 5 ; wing, 4J ; tail, 2. 



HAK. North America at large, and south to Brazil and Paraguay. 



Nest, a flask-shaped building of mud, lined with wool, feathers and bits 

 of straw. 



Eggs, four 01- five, white, spotted with reddish-brown. 



Early in May, the Cliff Swallow crosses the southern border of 

 Ontario, and gradually works its way up to the far north, breeding 

 in colonies in suitable places all over the county. In towns and 

 villages, the nests are placed under the eaves of outhouses ; in the 

 country, they are fastened under projecting ledges of rock and hard 

 embankments. The birds are of an amiable, sociable disposition, as 

 many as fifty families being sometimes observed in a colony without 

 the slightest sign of quarrelling. Two broods are raised in the 

 season, and by the end of August they begin to move off and are 

 seen no more till spring. They are somewhat fastidious in their 

 choice of a nesting place, and on this account are not equally 

 abundant at all points, but still they are very numerous throughout 

 the Province, passing along to the North- West, where Mr. Thompson 

 reports them as breeding abundantly in Manitoba. On the boun- 

 dary, at Pembina, Dr. Coues noticed them as the most abundant of 

 the family, and he traced them all along the line westward to the 

 Rockies. 



In Alaska, Mr. Dall states that he found the species nesting at 

 Nullato, "about the trading stations, and was told by the natives 

 that it nested on the faces of the sandstone cliffs along the Yukon, 

 before the advent of the white man placed at its disposal the con- 

 venient shelter of the trading-post. The birds were quick to take 

 advantage of the hospitality offered them, and to change from their 

 primitive nesting sites to civilized domiciles." 



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