VIOLET-GREEN SWALLOW. 357 
as Mr. Sumichrast informs us, at almost all elevations, and is very common. Mr. 
Salvin witnessed its abundance in Guatemala during a portion of the year.’ (Coues.) 
“When in New Mexico, in 1864,” Dr. Elliott Coues continues, ‘I found the Violet- 
green Swallows to be very common in the Raton Mountains. This was in June, and I 
have no doubt that the birds were then nesting, though I had no chance of observing 
them closely. I noticed their close resemblance to White-bellied Swallows in general 
appearance, and particularly in mode of flight; and I observed, then as subsequently, 
the curiously misleading circumstance that the birds appeared to have white rumps. In 
fact, as is well known, the rump is like the rest of the upper parts in color, but the 
fluffy white feathers of the flanks lie over the part during flight, sometimes meeting over 
the root of the tail, thus causing the appearance observed. This appearance of tricolor- 
ation—violet, green, and white—is striking. The following year, at Fort Whipple, in 
Arizona, I made quite a study of these birds, whose exquisite beauty could hardly fail 
to touch even the most insensible observer. They nestled in considerable numbers in the 
pine woods about the fort, usually preferring the edges of the timber, and constructed 
their nests of hay and feathers in the natural cavities of trees, or in old Woodpecker- 
holes. Sometimes isolated pairs occupied the deciduous trees in the vicinity, as the 
cotton-woods along the creek and the oaks of the open hill-sides; but most of the birds 
gathered in little colonies in clumps of pine trees. The birds reached this elevated locality 
the second or third week in March, and remained until late in September. I considered 
them the commonest of their tribe, quite characteristic, in fact, of the Arizona pine-belt, 
“In Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico, agrees Mr. Henshaw, this Swallow inhabits 
the higher regions, abundantly in all suitable localities, preferring the open spaces or 
edges of the pineries and groves of oaks, where it breeds in old Woodpecker-holes. In 
southern Colorado he found it in large colonies at the great altitude of 10,000 feet, 
early in June, when these ambitious little beauties were preparing to nest on high pine- 
stubs. In the same Territory Allen met with them at corresponding altitudes, generally 
nesting in the wonted Woodpecker-holes, but sometimes also in holes in rocks, in com- 
pany with White-throated Swifts. Ridgway has given us our best accounts of this 
rock-building, which I have myself never witnessed. The birds, he says, were abundant 
during May at Pyramid Lake, Nevada, where they were observed to enter the fissures 
of the calcareous tufa cliffs, where they doubtless had nests. In July he saw them again 
in the limestone cafions of the Ruby Mountains, associated with Cliff Swallows and the 
Swifts just mentioned. Here their nests were in horizontal fissures of the rock, and 
mostly inaccessible. Two, however, were in places admitting the hand; and these were 
found to be masses of sticks and straws, lined with feathers. One of these contained 
five eggs; the other, three broken eggs and the dead parent. The writer continues with 
a pertinent remark on the general subject:—‘Although other observers, whose state- 
ments we do not in the least doubt, have described the habits of this bird as arboreal, 
like those of the White-bellied Swallow (7. bicolor) and the Purple Martin, we never 
found it so in any locality during our trip, it being everywhere a strictly saxicoline 
species, and an associate of Micropus melanoleucus, Petrochelidon lunifrons, and 
Hirundo erythrogaster rather than of the species named, and to be found only where 
precipitous rocks, affording suitable fissures, occurred.’ 
