2 SOME CANADIAN BIRDS. 



as a swallow's flight is — and over many a garden and grove lying 

 between two colonies swallows may rarely appear. 



The names of our four species were suggested by the places they 

 select for nesting sites. The bank swallow bores a gallery in a sand 

 bank, and at the end of the excavation makes a chamber where it 

 places the few sprigs of dry grass which form a cushion for eggs and 

 young. The tree swallow hunts for a cavity in a tree in which to 

 deposit its eggs. The cliff or eave swallow fastens its gourd-shaped 

 home under the eave of a house, or where no such hospitable shelter 

 is to be found, selects a high cliff ; while the barn swallow chooses a 

 beam oi- rafter under the roof for its nesting site — when a barn is 

 within reach. 



There was a time — and at a comparatively recent date la 

 swallow chronology — when barns were not to be found in this 

 country, and these birds were forced to accept such nesting sites as 

 the wilderness afforded. Some barn swallows have not yet dis- 

 covered the barns, and are even now putting their nests in caverns 

 and in any nooks or crevices they may happen upon. In the prairie 

 country nests of this species have been found on the ground under 

 some slight shelter, and at least one observer has discovered their 

 nests on the face of a stream's bank. 



(Birds are conservative as a rule, and follow precedents rather 

 closely, but when occasion demands they can be "progressive," 

 and show themselves quite apt at taking up new notions and meet- 

 ing new conditions.) 



These barn swallows use mud — common-place, street-puddle mud 

 — to construct their nests, and in the spring-time may be seen 

 clustering around the mud-puddles in the road- ways gathering their 

 material. They usually bind the pellets of mud with dried grass. 

 In this use of grass as a binding the barn swallow differs from the 

 eave swallow, for the mud walls of the nests under the eaves con- 

 tain no grass or other fibrous material, the pellets being held 

 together by adhesion or by saliva. 



The eggs of the barn swallow are white, spotted with several 

 shades of brown and purple, while the eggs laid by the tree swallow 

 and the bank swallow are unspotted, and are of a dull chalk-like 

 white, differing in this particular from the clear white eggs of the 



