. Birdcraft : a field book of two hundred song, game, and water birds . West Indies, Central America, and northern South America. The Bank Swallow is the plainest, as well as the smallest,of the family. His back is the colour of the damp mottledgray sand with which he is closely associated, and he showsno glints of purple, steel-blue, and buff, like his brethren,but wears a dusky cloak fastened about his throat with aband of the same colour. There is always a large colony of these Swallows nearSouthport, where Sasco Hill is cut off abruptly by theSound. The bank is high, and shows a face of va
. Birdcraft : a field book of two hundred song, game, and water birds . West Indies, Central America, and northern South America. The Bank Swallow is the plainest, as well as the smallest,of the family. His back is the colour of the damp mottledgray sand with which he is closely associated, and he showsno glints of purple, steel-blue, and buff, like his brethren,but wears a dusky cloak fastened about his throat with aband of the same colour. There is always a large colony of these Swallows nearSouthport, where Sasco Hill is cut off abruptly by theSound. The bank is high, and shows a face of variousgrades of loam and some strata of gravel; below there is abit of stony beach, bare at low tides, but in storms thewater breaks half-way up the bank. A few feet above high-water mark you can see the holes in the bank which are theentrances to the Swallows nests. They are not arrangedwith any sort of regularity, but the birds have chosen inva-riably the stiff loam, which was the least likely to crumbleaway in the boring-process. None of the tunnels are within 130. SONG-BIRDS. Tanager three feet of the top, and they are almost all wider thanthey are high, as is frequently the case with tunnels vary from a foot to eighteen inches in length,and at the end are the wisps of grass and feathers thathold the fragile white eggs. The feathers of many differentbirds are found in the nests of this colony, — the breast-feathers of Ducks, Gulls, and various Shore-birds, which arenot in this vicinity at the Swallows nesting-time. In theautumn and winter many Water-birds are wounded by gun-ners, but escape notice, and, drifting ashore, become wedgedbetween rocks and stones, and I think that it is mainlyfrom the scraps of down adhering to such carcasses thatthis colony lines its nests. The Swallows, as a family, show great inventive qualitiesin the way in which they have adapted their habits to theencroachments of civilization. Now, almost wholly domes-ticated, they seem
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Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectbirdsunitedstates
