AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY. 401 



and the U. S. custom office, whose flag is seen in front of the next to 

 the last building on the left. 



I spent some time at St. Michaels and I never tired of watching 

 these birds so well known throughout their range, which covers the en- 

 tire continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the Arctic 

 Circle to southern Brazil. They seemed like old playmates from my 

 Massachusetts home and I often found myself in the vicinity of the 

 custom office quarters, which was the last building on the left of the 

 photograph, taken facing directly out over Norton's Sound. 



On July 12th, the eggs were laid and incubation had evidently begun. 

 On August 22nd when I was again at St. Michaels not a swallow was 

 to be seen. . / 



I saw nests of this swallow on the face of a cliff a few miles below 

 Nulato on the Yukon River. They were built in a compact colony of 

 ten or more nests under a slightly projecting shelf of rock and may 

 safely be taken as examples of what this species must have used as 

 nesting sites before that interloper — the white man — began to build 

 shelters for his crops and stock, called barns, the rafters of which were 

 adopted by Hiriindo as nesting places and who by that act became at 

 once a "barn swallow." At about the same time probably his. cousin 

 Petrochelidon adapted himself to new conditions and changed from a 

 Cliff Swallow to an Eave Swallow to the lasting benefit of all concern- 

 ed. 



