PASSERES HIRUNDINID^. 163 



locality for a term of years and afterward wholly absent. 

 The banks in which it burrows to rear its brood are con- 

 stantly changing, sometimes wholly disappearing. Rail- 

 road cuts furnish suitable places for a short time, and then 

 become unfitted by the caving of the perpendicuar banks to 

 form a sloping bank. River banks and the clay banks fac- 

 ing Lake Erie are not alike two years in succession. Where 

 a colony of some 200 pairs of the Bank Swallow nested for 

 three years not one is to be found now. The bank caved off 

 back of the nests twice in succession during the same 

 spring, both times after many nests had been finished and 

 the eggs deposited. That was too much for the swallows. 

 Now there is but one large colony in Lorain county on the 

 lake shore, but there are several small colonies. At the 

 lake shore the birds might justly be called decidedly com- 

 mon, but elsewhere in the county they are scarce. Before 

 the spread of the English Sparrows into the country ham- 

 lets Bank Swallows nested in the shale cliffs on Vermilion 

 river, but now the sparrows occupy all of the available 

 nesting-places. 



With the restriction that this swallow may be found 

 where cliffs or banks afford nesting-places, and not over 

 the country generally, it may be called common over the 

 entire state, during the summer. It is, of course, locally 

 common. 



Bank Swallow reaches the lake shore about the begin- 

 ning of the last week in April, leaves its nesting-places early 

 in July, and has gone south by the middle of September. 



235. (617.) Stelgidopteryx serripennis (Aud.). 81. 

 Rough-winged Swallow. 



Synonyms: Cotyle serripennis, Hirundo serripennis. 



"Bank Swallow," Rough-wing. 

 Kirkpatrick, Ohio Farmer, VIII, 1859, 290. 



This species is so little known, probably because of its 

 resemblance to the Bank Swallow, that reports are meager. 

 Dr. Wheaton says, "Next to the Barn Swallow, this appears 

 to be our most abundant species." Judging from my own 



