I 36 BARN SWALLOW. 



other suitable situation, where their proper food is must 

 abundant, and where the} r can be fed with the greatest con- 

 venience to both parties. Now and then they take a short 

 excursion themselves, and are also frequently fed while on 

 wing by an almost instantaneous motion of both parties, rising 

 perpendicularly in air, and meeting each other. About the 

 middle of August they seem to begin to prepare for their 

 departure. They assemble on the roof in great numbers, 

 dressing and arranging their plumage, and making occasional 

 essays, twittering with great cheerfulness. Their song is a 

 kind of sprightly warble, sometimes continued for a con- 

 siderable time. From this period to the 8 th of September, 

 they are seen near the Schuylkill and Delaware every after- 

 noon, for two or three hours before sunset, passing along to 

 the south in great numbers, feeding as they skim along. I 

 have counted several hundreds pass within sight in less than 

 a quarter of an hour, all directing their course towards the 

 south. The reeds are now their regular roosting places ; 

 and about the middle of September there is scarcely an 

 individual of them to be seen. How far south they continue 

 their route is uncertain; none of them remain in the United 

 States. Mr Bartram informs me, that, during his residence 

 in Florida, he often saw vast flocks of this and our other 

 swallows passing from the peninsula towards the south in 

 September and October, and also on their return to the north 

 about the middle of March. It is highly probable that, were 

 the countries to the south of the Gulf of Mexico, and as far 

 south as the great river Maranon, visited and explored by a 

 competent naturalist, these regions would be found to be the 

 winter rendezvous of the very birds now before us, and most 

 of our other migratory tribes. 



In a small volume which I have lately met with, entitled, 

 " An Account of the British Settlement of Honduras," by 

 Captain George Henderson, of the 5th West India Regiment, 

 published in London in 1809, the writer, in treating of that 

 part of its natural history which relates to birds, gives the 



