Yours truly, Dick.
Katharine Watkins Lawson.
VIOLET-GREEN SWALLOW.
(Tachycineta thalassina).
⅘ Life-size.
FROM COL. CHI. ACAD. SCIENCES.
THE VIOLET-GREEN SWALLOW.
(Tachycineta thalassina.)
The Violet-green Swallow is one of the most beautiful of the Hirundinidæ, or family of swallows. There are about eighty species of the family and they are world-wide in their distribution. These tireless birds seem to pass almost the entire day on the wing in pursuit of insects upon which they feed almost exclusively. They can outfly the birds of prey, and the fact that they obtain their food while flying enables them to pursue their migrations by day and to rest at night.
The Violet-green Swallow frequents the Pacific coast from British Columbia on the north, southward in the winter to Guatemala and Costa Rica. Its range extends eastward to the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains.
Its nest, which is made of dry grass and copiously lined with a mass of feathers, is variously placed. Sometimes the knot-holes of oaks and other deciduous trees are selected. They have also been known to use the deserted homes of the cliff swallow. Mr. Allen states that they “nest in abandoned woodpeckers’ holes, but at the Garden of the Gods and on the divide between Denver and Colorado City, we found them building in holes in the rocks.” This Swallow is quite common in Western Colorado, where they have been observed on the mountain sides at an altitude of eight to over ten thousand feet. In “The Birds of Colorado” Mr. W. W. Cooke says: “A few breed on the plains, but more commonly from six to ten thousand five hundred feet” above the level of the sea. He also adds that they begin laying late in June or early in July and desert the higher regions in August and the lower early in September.
The notes of this exquisite bird are described by an observer who says that they “consist of a rather faint warbling twitter, uttered as they sit on some low twig, their favorite perch; when flying about they seem to be rather silent.”
The Violet-green Swallows, like their sister species, usually nest and migrate in colonies.