GREEN-BLUE, OR WHITE-BELLIED SWALLOW. 137 
These birds are easily tamed, and soon become exceedingly 
gentle and familiar. I have frequently kept them in my 
room for several days at a time, where they employed them- 
selves in catching flies, picking them from my clothes, hair, 
&c., calling out occasionally as they observed some of their 
old companions passing the windows. 
GREEN-BLUE; OR, WHITE-BELLIED SWALLOW. 
HIRUNDO VIRIDIS Plate XXXVIII. Fig. 3. 
Peak's Museum , No. 7707. 
HIRUNDO BICOLOR. — Vieillot.* 
Hirundo viridis, Aud. Ann. Lye. of New York, i. p. 166. — The White-bellied 
Swallow, Aud. Orn. Biog. i. p. 491, pi. 98. — Hirundo bicolor, Bonap. Synop. 
p. 65. — North. Zool. ii. p. 328. 
This is the species hitherto supposed by Europeans to be 
the same with their common Martin, Hirundo urbica , a bird 
no where to be found within the United States. The English 
Martin is blue black above, the present species greenish 
1 
* This beautiful and highly curious little bird has, like the last, been confused 
with a European species, H. urbica. Gmelin and Latham esteem it only a 
variety, while other writers make it identical. From the European Martin it 
may always at once be distinguished by wanting the purely white rump, so 
conspicuous during the flight of the former. The priority of the name will 
be in favour of Vieillot, and it should stand as H. bicolor of that naturalist. 
The Martins possess a greater preponderance of power in the wings over 
the tail than the Swallows ; and their flight, as our author remarks, is conse- 
quently more like sailing than flying. All their turns are round and free, and 
performed most frequently in large sweeps, without any motion of the wings. 
In their other forms, they hardly differ, though almost any one will say this is 
a Martin, that a Swallow. I am inclined to keep them as a subordinate 
group, and there also would be placed the Water Martins, which have already 
been made into a genus by Boje. They are all nearly of the same form, are 
gregarious, and build and feed in large companies. 
The White-bellied Swallow bears more analogy to the Water Martins, than 
that of Europe, or those which frequent inland districts. According to Audubon, 
they sit and roost on the sedges and tall water plants, as well as upon the 
