1891
May 31
(No. 5)
Mass.
North Truro. - of June 2 but was apparently gone on
the morning of the 3rd. It was very tame but
easily startled by noise when it would fly up
into the apple tees. This bird was doubtless
an "escape" from one of the steamers which fly
between Boston & Savannah for these vessels pass
within a mile or two of Smalls and at this
season or a little earlier they usually carry
large numbers of Nonpareils consigned to the 
Boston dealers in live birds.
  Among the most interesting birds immediately
about the house were the Eave Swallows of
which upwards of thirty pairs were nesting
on the beams in an open barn cellar.  About
half the nests were supported securely by slats
nailed to these beams. Some of the birds were 
still at work on nests in various stages from
the initial to the final one. Perhaps half the
nests were completed. Two pairs of Barn Swallows
were building in the very middle of the Eave
Swallows' colony the nests of the former being
on one of the sills among several Eave Swallows'
nests. A pair of White-bellied Swallows occupied
a box on the top of an adjoining tool house
and Bank Swallows were frequently passing
over the trees from some sand bank not far
off. There were also a few Swifts about & a
Bluebird or two while a Chickadee had a hole
nearly completed in a beam of the grape arbor.
From the open fields outside the group of trees
came the songs of Grass Finches & Meadow Larks.