356 GREEN-BLUE, OR WHITE-BELLIED SWALLOW. 
GREEN-BLUE, OR WHITE-BELLIED SWALLOW. 
HIRUNDO VIRIDIS.—Fic. 164. 
Peale’s Museum, No. 7707. 7 
HIRUNDO BICOLOR. — Vietuiot.* 
Hirundo viridis, Aud. Ann. Lyc. of New York, i: p. 166. — The White-bell.ed 
Swallow, Aud. Orn. Biog. i. p. 491, pl. 98.—Hirundo bicolor, Bonap. Synop. 
p- 65.— North. Zool. ii. p. 328. A 
Turis is the species hitherto supposed by Europeans to be the same 
with their common Martin, Mirundo urbica, a bird no where to be 
found within the United States. The English Martin is blue black 
above, the present species greenish blue; the former. has the whole 
rump white, and the legs and feet are covered with short, white, downy 
feathers, the latter has nothing of either. That ridiculous propensity 
in foreign writers, to consider most of our birds as varieties of their 
own, has led them into many mistakes, which it shall be the business 
* This beautiful and highly curious little bird has, like the last, been confused 
with a European species, 7. urbica. Gmelin and Latham esteem it only a variety, 
while other writers make it identical. From the European Martin it may always at 
once be distinguished by wanting the purely white rump, so conspicuous during the 
flight of the former. The priority of the name will be in favor of Vieillot, and it 
‘should stand as H.. bicolor of that naturalist. a 
The Martins possess a greater preponderance of power in the wings over the tail 
than the Swallows ; and their flight, as our author remarks, is consequently more 
like sailing than flying. All their turns are round and free, and performed most 
frequently in iarge sweeps, without any motion.of the wings. In their other forms, 
they hardly differ, though almost any one will say this is a Martin, that.a Swallow. 
I am inclined to keep them as a subordinate group, and there also would be placed 
the Water Martins, which have already been made into a genus by Boje. They 
are all nearly of the same form, are gregarious, and build and feed in large com- 
anies. APE 
c The White-bellied Swallow bears more analogy to the Water Martins, than that 
of Europe, or those which frequent inland districts. According to Audubon, they- 
sit and roost on the sedges and tall water plants, as well as upon the bushes ; and 
they sometimes, in the beginning of autumn, as mentioned by our author, collect on 
the shores or sandbanks of rivers, in considerable numbers. About the end of July, 
in the present year, I had an opportunity of seeing the latter incident take place 
with our Common Sand Martin, (HZ. riparia,) one very hot evening, when residing 
on the shores of the Solway Frith, where the beach is unusually flat and sandy.- 
Several hundreds of these were collected upon a space not exceeding two acres ; 
most of them were upon the ground, a few occasionally rising and mane a short 
circuit. At this part, a small stream entered the sea, and they seemed partly rest- 
ing and washing, and partly feeding on a small fly that had apparently come newly 
to existence, and covered the sands in immense profusion. None of our other 
species mingled, though they were abundant in the neighborhood. 
The American Bird is also remarkable as being a berry eater, an occurrence 
nearly unknown among the Hirundinide. Neither is their breeding in holes of 
trees frequent among them. The anly instance of a similar propensity, is one re- 
lated of the Common Swift, in Loudon’s Magazine of Natural History, which, 
however, is a species more likely to suit itself to circumstances of the kind, as it 
appears to have done in this instance, where it formed its breeding place in the 
deserted holes of Woodpeckers. Audubon has traced their migrations through the 
year, and has proved that they winter in Louisiana. I believe they belong exclu- 
sively to the New World. — Ep. 
