LAND BIRDS. 545 
may return again. During prolonged rainy spells the mud nests are 
likely to become loosened from the boards to which they are attached and 
not infrequently a hundred nests fall to the ground within a few days. 
After such a catastrophe the owners are very likely to seek a new nesting 
place. Ordinarily the nest is nearly globular, the entrance being a round 
hole at or a little below the middle, the nest itself consisting mainly of 
rounded pellets of mud mixed with very little fibrous material, sometimes 
with a few straws and grass roots. The typical nest is flask-shaped or 
retort shaped, the entrance being through a cylindrical or tubular neck, 
often three or four inches in length. Sometimes these nests are placed 
side by side and so close as to adhere firmly together, but often little inter- 
vals are left and here little platforms of mud are built where the old birds 
or the young may rest if so disposed. 
The food of this species does not differ noticeably from that of the other 
swallows, although it has not been observed so frequently feeding on bay- 
berries as some of the others. Its usual food consists entirely of insects 
taken on the wing. These are largely two-winged (dipterous) insects, 
but immense quantities of beetles and neuropteroid insects are also taken. 
The Cliff Swallow arrives from the south at about the same time as the 
Barn Swallow, that is from the middle of April to the 10th of May, accord- 
ing to latitude, and moves southward again during the latter half of August, 
the last usually disappearing soon after the first of September, We have 
records of fresh eggs from Kalamazoo county June 4, 1883 and June 13, 
1886, and from Ottawa county May 23 and 24, 1879. The eggs are three 
to five, white, rather coarsely speckled with brown and lilac, and average 
.81 by .55 inches. They are not with certainty separable from eggs of the 
Barn Swallow, but as a rule are more coarsely spotted. 
TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION. 
Tail with tip emarginate or slightly forked. 
Adult (sexes alike): Forehead white or grayish-white; top of head glossy blue-black; 
middle and lower back glossy blue-black, more or less streaked with pure white; hind-neck 
with a grayish collar; rump cinnamon or reddish-buff; upper tail-coverts brownish-gray; 
chin, sides of head and most of throat rich, dark chestnut, often extending around the neck 
as a narrow collar (in front of the gray one), and spreading more or less over the chest; 
middle of throat with a patch of blue-black, very variable in extent, sometimes covering 
most of the throat, sometimes forming only a small spot; breast and sides grayish-brown 
or reddish-brown; belly white; under tail coverts mottled dusky and white; wings and tail 
plain dusky or brownish-black; bill and feet black; iris brown. Young: Little or no chest- 
nut about the head and throat, and all the glossy blue-black replaced with dull blackish; 
throat mixed with dusky and whitish; tertiaries and upper tail-coverts edged with rusty 
or buff. 
Length 5 to 6 inches; wing 4.05 to 4.55; tail 2 to 2.20. 
247. Barn Swallow. Hirundo erythrogastra Bodd. (613) 
Synonyms: American Barn Swallow, Barn-loft Swallow, Fork-tailed Swallow.— 
Hirundo erythrogaster, Boddert, 1783.—H. erythrogastra, Sclater, 1862.—Chelidon 
erythrogaster, A. O. U. Check-list, 1886.—Hirundo horreorum, Bart., 1799, Baird, 1858, 
and many authors. 
Plate LV and Figure 124. 
Sexes nearly alike. The deeply forked tail (whence the common expres- 
sion “swallow-tail”), the slender outer feather being about twice as long 
69 
