12 



another, taken on the 20th of July, had four fresh eggs. Mr. N. C. Brown, in his 

 ' Reconnaissance in South-western Texas,' says that he found the present species to he 

 a common summer resident there, arriving ahout the 20th of March. 



Mr. G. B. Sennett has given the following interesting account of the species in his 

 paper on the hirds of the Bio Graude : — 



" None were seen lower down the river than Hidalgo, much to our wonder, for the 

 conditions seem quite as favourahle for them at Brownsville or Matamoras as at points 

 ahove. In the absence of cliffs in the vicinity of Hidalgo, they adapt themselves to the 

 eaves of the buildings in the town. Through the kindness of Sheriff Leo, we occupied 

 the court-house, and these Swallows were incessantly working and chattering about us 

 from daylight to dark, and even in the night we could hear them in their nests. We 

 had ample opportunity to observe their habits. They are gregarious in all their occu- 

 pations. In collecting mud for their houses, the choice spots of their selection on the 

 margin of the river Avere so thickly covered with them that often more than a hundred 

 huddled on and over a space of two feet in diameter. The curious bottle-shaped nests 

 were 1 crowded so closely together that little could be seen of them but their mouths. 

 We endeavoured to ohtain a sample of the nests entire, but there was so much quick- 

 sand in the mud of which they were made that we found it impracticable to do so. 

 None of the nests were lined. In some we found stones and hits of broken crockery, 

 which had been thrown in by the boys hefore the nests were completed ; and yet the 

 birds had laid their eggs among this rubbish. In making the nest, the first choice is a 

 comer formed by wall, eaves, and rafter, very little labour, therefore, being necessary to 

 make the remaining side. This side of the nest is made spherical, with the mouth and 

 the neck standing out some two inches from it. The next ones lap on to it, others lap on 

 to them, and so on. As soon as a shelf is formed large enough to hold the bird, it stands 

 on it and works from within. The pair work in turn. To gather the eggs it is necessary 

 to demolish a part of the nest, unless, as we sometimes found, eggs were laid before the 

 nest was finished. In the completed nests, the clutch varied from four to seven ; but in 

 one extra large nest, which from its size and shape looked as if two birds occupied it in 

 common, we took ten eggs. Prom the window of our sleeping-room we could watch 

 the birds at their work without disturbing them, although but four feet distant from 

 some of them. When we took the eggs, on May 7th, some were nearly ready to hatch, 

 but most of them were fresh, and many birds were just beginning their nests. 



" The ground-colour of the eggs is a dull white. The markings are brown and very 

 variable. Some are speckled, others blotched ; some regularly over the whole egg, and 

 others with far the greater number of spots on the larger end. The longest egg was 

 0'90, the shortest 0'70; the broadest - 60, and the narrowest 053. The average of fifty 

 e<rgs is 0-80 by 0-56." 



Turning once more northward, we find that Mr. Scott records this Swallow as 

 common in Western Missouri, arriving about the 10th of April and breeding. The 

 same gentleman says that in Arizona he observed the species in numbers at Riverside in 



