SWALLOWS 265 



in the summer and fall, at the time when the insects are flying 

 about considerably. Ants formed nearly 10 per cent of the 

 food, and other Hymenoptera about 12 per cent; Hemiptera, 

 or bugs, furnished 15 per cent, and included stink bugs, chinch 

 bugs, plant lice, and leaf hoppers. Dragonflies are captured 

 in some numbers.* 



Forbush states that this bird is very serviceable in destroy- 

 ing the moths of the smaller cutworms found on grass lands. 

 He adds that the birds gather codling moths, cankerworm 

 moths, and tortriad or leaf-rolling moths from the orchard 

 and that they catch also horseflies, house flies, mosquitoes, 

 gnats, and crane flies.f Barrows states that barn swallows 

 are very fond of the fruit of the bayberry or wax-myrtle and 

 sometimes, during their autumn migration, alight by thou- 

 sands on the low bushes and gorge themselves on the berries.^ 



TREE SWALLOW; WHITE-BELLIED SWALLOW: 

 Iridoprocne bicolor (Vieillot) . 



State records. — The tree, or white-bellied, swallow occurs 

 irregularly, but often in considerable numbers, in migration. 

 It is the hardiest of its tribe and a few remain all winter on 

 the Gulf coast. McCormack states that it reaches Leighton 

 about the last week in March and remains in greater or 

 lesser numbers during the whole of April. He has not ob- 

 served it in fall. Golsan took one at Autaugaville, October 3, 

 1914, and I observed small flocks at Theodore, November 11, 

 and at Bayou Labatre, November 19, 1915. A few w.ere ob- 

 served in Grand Bay, March 22, and several near Mobile, 

 March 24 (1912). At Chuckvee Bay, Baldwin County, 

 February 7, 1912, I saw 3 of these swallows and at the same 

 place, March 16, a flock of about fifty. Four individuals were 

 seen near Jasper, April 30, 1914, in a flock of barn swallows. 



General habits. — In the North, this swallow is widely dis- 

 tributed, nesting not in colonies but in scattered pairs in wood- 

 peckers' holes, in hollow trees and stumps, and also in bird 

 boxes and in crevices about the eaves and corners of buildings. 



•Beal, F. E. L., Bull. 619, U. S. Dept. Agr., pp. 11-16, 1918. 

 IForbush, E. H., Useful birds and their protection, pp. 345-346, 1907. 

 tBarrows, W. B., Michigan bird life, pp. 548-549, 1912. 



