386 DIVISION I. VERTEBRAL ANIMALS. — CLASS II. AVES. 



families gatlicr in immense flocks, and, after remaining about the marshes 

 near the sea coast for a few daj'S, they leave for tlicir winter homes. 



The Cliif Swallow is very generally distributed as a summer inhabitant of 

 the United States. It arrives in tiie north from about the twenty-fifth of 

 April to the first of ilay. It has all the habits and characteristics of the 

 preceding species, and is probably as well-known in most sections as that 

 bird. About the tenth of May (sometimes earlier, sometimes later, accord- 

 ing to latitude) it pairs, and connnences building. The nest is usually 

 fixed beneath caves or cornices, or other jutting portions of buildings, or on 

 cliffs, beneath overhanging portions of rock. It is constructed externally 

 of pellets of mud and earth, which arc gradually plastered together into a 

 large gourd-shaped structure ; the larger part attached to the building or 

 cliff, and the neck curving outward and downward. At the part of the nest 

 resembling the neck of the gourd is the entrance. The whole fabric is much 

 more brittle than the nest of the barn swallow, for the reason that no grass 

 or hay is worked into the mud to give it strength. A lining of fine grass 

 and feathers is fixed in this, and the whole makes a very neat and comfort- 

 able structure. The eggs are usually five in number. They can hardly be 

 distinguished from those of the preceding species ; and, in fiict, identifica- 

 tion is next to impossible. In a majority of the present species, the spots 

 are somewhat coarser, and the eggs are generally longer. The eggs are of 

 the average dimensions of .S-1 by ..54 inch. 



Like the barn swallow, this species gathers into large flocks at the end of 

 the sunnner, and frequents the same localities, but not at the same time, as 

 it leaves usually a week or ten days before the other bird. 



The Wliitc-bellicd Swallow, or Blue-backed Swallow, is a very common 

 and well-known species as a summer inhabitant of the Northern States, be- 

 mg most abundant in localities near sheets of water, and less common in 

 high, di-y districts. lis habits arc well known ; and arriving, as it does, 

 early in the season, and fraternizing with man, it is a great favorite. It 

 makes its ap[)earancc often as early as the seventeenth of April, but does not 

 commence building before the middle of ^lay. Near cities and towns, the 

 nest is l)uilt in martin-boxes provided for its reception; but in less thickly 

 settled districts, it is built in holes in stumps and trees ; and cases are on 

 record of its being Ijuilt in a deserted nest of the common barn swallow. 

 When passing through the chain of the Umbagog Lakes, in Maine, we ob- 

 served great numbers of these birds, whose nests were built in holes in dead 

 trees standing in the lake near the shores. These nests were so plenty, that, 

 in the area of about ten rods scpiare, we counted osev fifty. Of course, the 

 birds were in myriads, and the species constitutes the connnon swallow of 

 the districts in that latitude. The materials used in the construction of the 



