402 
HIRUNDINIDiE. 
pitous banks, which, in the wildest and most secluded localities, 
rise in picturesque beauty above the river or the lake, as to the 
stratum of sand which overlies the quarry, or to the sand-pit, 
where the respective operations "of quarrying for stone or exca- 
vating for sand are daily in progress. 
A colony of these birds annually resorts to the banks of a 
spacious sand-pit within a mile of Belfast, and close to the old 
Malone road. In consequence of the sand being in such request 
here for building purposes, they have the labour of making entirely 
new burrows for their nests at least once, and occasionally twice, 
in the season. So much is this sand required for building, that, 
although the perforation made by the bird, will, where the material 
is soft, sometimes extend five feet inward, I have known the bank 
colonized by it, required for use before the first brood had escaped; 
when the labour of forming a second burrow in the same season 
was commenced. The following details respecting this locality 
may be given : — 
On the 29th of April, 1832, a friend remarked, that the sand-martins had made 
thirty-two burrows in this place, and that about three days afterwards, two more ap- 
peared : he observed the birds employed in carrying hay and feathers into them. 
When visiting this place on the 18th of September of the same year, I reckoned 
seventy of their perforations. 
May 18, 1883. — On the south side of the Malone sand-pit, the sand-martins 
have, since their arrival this season, made above eighty holes towards the top of the 
bank, some of them not more than two inches apart, although there is abundance of 
room ; so much indeed, that the colony does not occupy more than one-fiftieth part of 
the banks suitable for their nests. In this locality, where the birds have a choice of 
banks from thirty to forty feet in height, and the sand is of a similar nature through- 
out, they always select situations most out of the reach of enemies of all kinds. It 
cannot therefore be said that “ they exercise their propensity [for boring] without 
reflection.” — Macgillivray’s Brit. Birds, vol. iii. p. 599. Where they have not 
thus had a choice of locality, I have frequently seen their burrows subject to be 
destroyed. 
This sand-pit, their chief haunt in the neighbourhood of Belfast, was entirely de- 
serted by them in the summer of 1836 ; and from the progress of the excavation, 
not a burrow of the preceding season remained to denote that the species had ever 
been there. In 1837, I omitted to look after them, but in 1838, they were in num- 
bers as usual. On visiting the locality on the evening of the 11th of May, I saw 
not less than sixty flying about, and so many were giving utterance to their feeble 
