The nest is not often occupied till June, when the birds may be most certain of finding food for their offspring; and the rearing of a single brood is a season’s work. Five eggs are almost invariably the number laid, and they are of a pure white color, the shell being very little glossed and of a coarser grain than is the case with eggs of the other Swallows.
Purple Martins are very sociable birds, and a voluble flow of small talk is kept up by them during the nesting season. The song, if such it may be called, is a succession of pleasant warblings and gurglings, interspersed with harsh rubbing and creaking notes. A particularly mellow coo, coo, coo, recurs from time to time, and any of the notes seem to require considerable effort on the part of the performer.
It will prove to be a sad day for the Martins when the English Sparrows take full possession of our cities. The Martins are not deficient in courage, but they cannot endure the presence of the detested foreigners. The Sparrows are filthy creatures, and it may be that the burden of the vermin, which they invariably introduce to their haunts, bears more heavily upon the skins of our more delicately constituted citizens than upon their own swinish hides.
No. 127.
CLIFF SWALLOW.
A. O. U. No. 612. Petrochelidon lunifrons (Say).
Synonyms.—Eave Swallow. Republican Swallow.
Description.—Adult: A prominent whitish crescent on forehead; crown, back, and an obscure patch on breast steel-blue; throat, sides of head, and nape deep chestnut; breast, sides, and a cervical collar brown-gray; belly white or whitish; wings and tail blackish; rump pale rufous,—the color reaching around on flanks; under tail-coverts dusky. In young birds the frontlet is obscure or wanting; the plumage dull brown above, and the throat blackish with white specks. Bill and feet weak, the former suddenly compressed at tip. Length 5.00-6.00 (127-152.4); wing 4.35 (110.5); tail 2.00 (50.8); bill from nostril .22 (5.6).
Recognition Marks.—“Warbler size,” but comparison inappropriate,—better say “Swallow size”; white forehead and rufous rump. Found in colonies.
Nesting.—Nest, an inverted stack-shaped, or declined retort-shaped structure of mud, scantily or well lined with grass, and depending from the walls of cliffs, sides of barns under the eaves, and the like. Eggs, 4-5, white, spotted, sometimes scantily, with cinnamon- and rufous-brown. Av. size, .82 × .55 (20.8 × 14). Season, May 25-June 25.
General Range.—North America, north to the limit of trees, breeding southward to the Valley of the Potomac and the Ohio, southern Texas, southern Arizona, and California; Central and South America in winter. Not found in Florida.
Range in Washington.—Summer resident, abundant but locally distributed east of Cascades; much less common in Puget Sound region.
Migrations.—Spring: April 15-30. Fall: first week in Sept. Tacoma, April 4, 1908.
Authorities.—Hirundo lunifrons, Say, Cooper and Suckley, Rep. Pac. R. R. Surv. XII. 1860, 184. T. C&S. D¹. Kb. Ra. D². Ss¹. Ss². J. B. E.
Specimens.—Prov. P. C.
Taken in Douglas County. Photo by the Author.
THE CLIFF DWELLERS.
Few birds serve to recall more accurately a picture of sequestered grandeur and primeval peace than do these amiable tenants of Washington’s very limited scab lands. It is true that certain Cliff Swallows, following the example of their weaker eastern brethren, have taken to nesting under the eaves of churches and barns and outbuildings, but they are a negligible quantity in comparison with the swarms which still resort to the ancestral “breaks” of the Columbia gorge and the weird basaltic coulees of Douglas County.
The particular nesting site may be a matter of a season’s use, populous this year and abandoned the next; but somewhere along this frowning face of basaltic columns Swallows were nesting before old Chief Moses and his copper-colored clans were displaced by the white man. Soon after the retreating ice laid bare the fluted bastions of the Grand Coulee, I think, these fly-catching cohorts swept in and established a northern outpost, an outpost which was not abandoned even in those degenerate days when deer gave way to cayuses, cayuses to cattle, and cattle to sheep and fences—fences, mark you, on the Swallow’s domain!
Evidence of this age-long occupation of the lava-cliff is furnished not only by the muddy cicatrices left by fallen nests, but, wherever the wall juts out or overhangs, so as to shield a place below from the action of the elements, by beds of guano and coprolitic stalagmites, which cling to the uneven surface of the rock. Judged by the same testimony, certain of the larger blow-holes, or lava-bubbles, must be used at night as lodging places, at least out of the nesting season.