Yol. XV] 
1898 J 
General Notes. 
27I 
Nesting Instincts of Swallows.- — X.s supplementing Mr. Brewster’s 
record of the premature exhibition of the nest-building and procreative 
instincts of Swallows (see Auk, XV, April, 1898, p. 194), I may add some 
observations made on Tree Swallows ( Tachycmeta bicolor ), at Leonia, 
N. J., during August and September, 1897. The extensive salt marshes 
in which myriads of these birds roost in July, August, and September, are 
here crossed by a road over which I passed almost daily and rarely with- 
out seeing in the road, one or more flocks of Tree Swallows, varying in 
size from eight or ten to several hundred birds. Without exception, as 
far as I observed, and I studied them very closely at short range, these 
birds were in the immature plumage of birds of the year. By far the 
larger number seemed to have no special object in alighting in the road, 
they did not move about as though searching for food, indeed for the 
most part were practically motionless, but occasional^ a pair would 
copulate, as described by Mr. Brewster, and more often a bird would pick 
up a bit of dried grass and fly up into the air with it, or sometimes it was 
carried fifty yards or more and dropped from the air; at others the bird 
would carry it to the telegraph wires bordering the road and drop it after 
perching a moment. 
Additional evidence of inherited knowledge was apparently given by 
many Tree Swallows which were often seen hovering about a pile driven 
in a creek which traversed these meadows. I at first supposed these birds 
to be feeding on insects which presumably had alighted on the pile, but 
the number of birds, often a dozen or more were seen about the pile, and 
the persistency with which they remained there, forced me to conclude 
that in a wholly unreasoning way they were looking for a nesting site. 
Frank M. Chapman, American Museum of Natural History, New T ork 
