46 



BANK SWALLOW, OR SAND MARTIN. 

 HIHUJVDO HIPAHIA. 

 [Plate XXXVIIL— Fig. 4.] 



liATH. Si/n. IV, j&. 568 — 10. — Jrct. ZooL II, No. 332. — V Hirondelle de rhage, Buff. VI, 

 632. Fl. enl. 543./. 2. — Turt. St/st. 629. — Peale's Museum, J\o. 7637. 



THIS appears to be the most sociable with its kind and the 

 least intimate with man, of all our Swallows; living together in 

 large communities of sometimes three or four hundred. On the 

 high sandy bank of a river, quarry, or gravel pit, at a foot or two 

 from the surface, they commonly scratch out holes for their nests, 

 running them in a horizontal direction to the depth of two and 

 sometimes three feet. Several of these holes are often within a 

 few inches of each other, and extend in various strata along the 

 front of the precipice, sometimes for eighty or one hundred yards. 

 At the extremity of this hole a little fine dry grass with a few large 

 downy feathers form the bed on which their eggs, generally five in 

 number, and pure white, are deposited. The young are hatched 

 late in May; and here I have taken notice of the common Crow, 

 in parties of four or five, watching at the entrance of these holes, 

 to seize the first straggling young that should make its appearance. 

 From the clouds of Swallows that usually play round these breed- 

 ing places, they remind one at a distance of a swarm of bees. 



The Bank Swallow arrives here earlier than either of the pre- 

 ceding; begins to build in April, and has commonly two brood in 

 the season. Their voice is a low mutter. They are particularly 

 fond of the shores of rivers, and, in several places along the Ohio, 

 they congregate in immense multitudes. We have sometimes se- 

 veral days of cold rain and severe weather after their arrival in 



