Brown, Olive or Grayish Brown, and Brown and Gray Sparrowy Birds 
Bank Swallow 
(Clivicola riparia) Swallow family 
Called also: SAND MARTIN; SAND SWALLOW 
Length — 5 to 5.5 inches. About an inch shorter than the English 
sparrow, but apparently much larger because of its wide 
wing-spread. 
Male and Female — Grayish brown or clay-colored above. Upper 
wings and tail darkest. Below, white, with brownish band 
across chest. Tail, which is rounded and more nearly square 
than the other swallows, is obscurely edged with white. 
Range — Throughout North America south of Hudson Bay. 
Migrations— April. October. Summer resident. 
Where a brook cuts its way through a sand bank to reach 
the sea is an ideal nesting ground for a colony of sand martins. 
The face of the high bank shows a number of clean, round holes 
indiscriminately bored into the sand, as if the place had just 
received a cannonading; but instead of war an atmosphere of 
peace pervades the place in midsummer, when you are most 
likely to visit it. Now that the young ones have flown from 
their nests that your arm can barely reach through the tunnelled 
sand or clay, there can be little harm in examining the feathers 
dropped from gulls, ducks, and other water-birds with which the 
grassy home is lined. 
The bank swallow’s nest, like the kingfisher’s, which it 
resembles, is his home as well, There he rests when tired of fly- 
ing about in pursuit of insect food. Perhaps a bird that has been 
resting in one of the tunnels, startled by your innocent house- 
breaking, will fly out across your face, near enough for you to 
see how unlike the other swallows he is: smaller, plainer, and 
with none of their glinting steel-blues and buffs about him. 
With strong, swift flight he rejoins his fellows, wheeling, skim- 
ming, darting through the air above you, and uttering his char- 
acteristic “ giggling twitter,” that is one of the cheeriest noises 
heard along the beach. In early October vast numbers of these 
swallows may be seen in loose flocks along the Jersey coast, 
slowly making their way South. Clouds of them miles in extent 
are recorded. 
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