When these feuds are finally settled, they address themselves diligently to the great work and build a rather big nest. They are not neat or skilful workers, but merely stuff a great quantity of straw and other light materials into the breeding-hole, and line the nest with feathers and horsehair. On this soft but disorderly bed the female lays from five to seven pure white eggs.
All those species that are liable at any time to become the victims of raptorial birds are very much beholden to this Swallow, as he is the most vigilant sentinel they possess. When the hurrying Falcon is still far off, and the other birds unsuspicious of his approach, the Swallows suddenly rush up into the sky with a wild rapid flight to announce the evil tidings with distracted screams. The alarm spreads swift as light through the feathered tribes, which, on all sides, are in terrified commotion, crouching in the grass, plunging into thickets, or mounting upwards to escape by flight. I have often wondered at this, since this swift-winged and quick-doubling little bird is the least likely to fall a prey himself.
They possess another habit very grateful to the mind of every early riser. At the first indication of dawn, and before any other wild bird has broken the profound silence of night, multitudes of this Swallow, as if at the signal of a leader, begin their singing and twittering, at the same time mounting upwards into the quiet dusky sky. Their notes at this hour differ from the hurried twittering uttered during the day, being softer and more prolonged, and, sounding far up in the sky from so many throats, the concert has a very charming effect, and seems in harmony with the shadowy morning twilight.
[30.] ATTICORA CYANOLEUCA (Vieill.).
(BANK-SWALLOW.)
Atticora cyanoleuca, Burm. La-Plata Reise, ii. p. 479; Scl. et Salv. Nomencl. p. 14; Hudson, P. Z. S. 1872, p. 844 (Buenos Ayres); Durnford, Ibis, 1876, p. 158 (Buenos Ayres), 1877, p. 32 (Chupat), p. 170 (Buenos Ayres), 1878, p. 392 (Central Patagonia); White, P. Z. S. 1882, p. 596 (Catamarca); Barrows, Bull. Nutt. Orn. Cl. viii. p. 90 (Concepcion, Bahia Blanca); Sharpe, Cat. B. x. p. 186.
Description.—Above dark glossy blue; quills and tail-feathers black; cheeks and under surface of body pure white, the sides of the neck blue, descending in a half-crescent on the sides of the chest; sides of body and flanks brown; under tail-coverts black; bill and feet black: total length 4·7 inches, wing 4·05, tail 2·2. Female similar.
Hab. Central and South America.
This diminutive dark-plumaged species is the smallest of our Hirundines. In Buenos Ayres they appear early in September, arriving before the Martins, but preceded by the Common Swallow. They are bank-birds, breeding in forsaken holes and burrows, for they never bore into the earth themselves, and are consequently not much seen about the habitations of man. They sometimes find their breeding-holes in the banks of streams, or, in cultivated districts, in the sides of ditches, and even down in wells. But if in such sites alone fit receptacles for their eggs were met with, the species, instead of one of the commonest, would be rare indeed with us; for on the level pampas most of the water-courses have marshy borders, or at most but low and gently sloping banks. But the burrowing habits of two other animals—the Vizcacha (Lagostomus trichodactylus), the common large rodent of the pampas, and the curious little bird called Minera (Geositta cunicularia)—have everywhere afforded the Swallows abundance of breeding-places on the plains, even where there are no streams or other irregularities in the smooth surface of the earth.
The Minera bores its hole in the sides of the Vizcacha’s great burrow, and in this burrow within a burrow the Swallow lays its eggs and rears its young, and is the guest of the Vizcacha, and as much dependent on it as the House-Wren and the Domestic Swallow on man; so that in spring, when this species returns to the plains, it is in the villages of the Vizcachas that we see them. There they live and spend the day, sporting about the burrows, just as the Common Swallow does about our houses; and to a stranger on the pampas one of these villages, with its incongruous bird and mammalian inhabitants, must seem a very curious sight in the evening. Before sunset the old male Vizcachas come forth to sit gravely at the mouths of their great burrows. One or two couples of Mineras, their little brown bird-tenants, are always seen running about on the bare ground round the holes, resting at intervals with their tails slowly moving up and down, and occasionally trilling-out their shrill laughter-like cry. Often a pair of Burrowing-Owls also live in the village, occupying one of the lesser disused burrows; and round them all flit half a dozen little Swallows, like twilight-moths with long black wings. It is never quite a happy family, however, for the Owls always hiss and snap at a Vizcacha if he comes too near; while the little Swallows never become reconciled to the Owls, but perpetually flutter about them, protesting against their presence with long complaining notes.