98 HANDBOOK OF BRITISH INLAND BIRDS 
MARTIN. 
{Chelidon urbica.) 
House Martin, Eaves Swallow, Martlet. — There 
are very few people who are not glad to have 
Martins nesting about a house, and their soft 
twittering as they busy themselves beneath our 
eaves all through the summer months seems one of 
the happiest sounds in nature. It has, too, a rise 
and fall of inflection which gives it the very air of 
intelligent and interested discussion, and it is hard 
to believe, as one listens, that the birds are not 
consciously raising and rejecting a hundred different 
suggestions for the better building of their house 
or the management of the young which are born in 
it. The points in which the Martin resembles and 
differs from the Swallow in appearance have been 
described under the previous heading. It generally 
arrives in numbers at about the same time (the 
middle of April) as its kindred species, but a few 
hardy Swallows are usually to be seen before the 
arrival of the earliest Martins. This bird is more 
gregarious than the Swallow, and seldom breeds 
far from others of its kind ; colonies may still be 
found occupying the original type of site on the 
face of a rocky cliff, but the great majority of 
Martins nest under eaves and window ledges, in the 
