The well-known bottle- or retort-shaped nests of the Cliff Swallow are composed of pellets of mud deposited in successive beakfuls by the industrious birds. It is always interesting to see a twittering company of these little masons gathering by the water’s edge and moulding their mortar to the required consistency. Not less interesting is it to watch them lay the foundations upon some smooth rock facet. Their tiny beaks must serve for hods and trowels, and because the first course of mud masonry is the most particular, they alternately cling and flutter, as with many prods and fairy thumps they force the putty-like material to lay hold of the indifferent wall.
There is usually much passing to and fro in the case of these cliff-dwellers, and we can never hope to steal upon them unawares. When one approaches from below, an alarm is sounded and anxious heads, wearing a white frown, are first thrust out at the mouths of the bottles, and then the air becomes filled with flying Swallows, charging about the head of the intruder in bewildering mazes and raising a babble of strange frangible cries, as tho a thousand sets of toy dishes were being broken. If the newcomer appears harmless, the birds return to their eggs by ones and twos and dozens until most of the company are disposed again. At such a moment it is great sport to set up a sudden shout. There is an instant hush, electric, ominous, while every little Injun of them is making for the door of his wigwam. Then they are dislodged from the cliff like an avalanche of missiles, a silent, down-sweeping cloud; but immediately they gain assurance in the open and bedlam begins all over again.
Taken in Douglas County. Photo by the Author.
A NESTING CLIFF, FROM BELOW.
The Cliff Swallows are, of course, beyond the reach of all four-footed enemies, but now and again a June rain-storm comes at the cliff from an unexpected quarter and plays sad havoc with their frail tenements. Besides this (in strictest confidence; one dislikes to pass an ill word of a suffering brother) the nests are likely to be infested with bed-bugs. Not all, of course, are so afflicted, but in some cases the scourge becomes so severe that the nest is abandoned outright, and eggs or young are left to their fate. In spite of this compromising weakness, the presence of these Swallows confers an incalculable benefit upon the farmer of eastern Washington, in that they alone are able to cope with a host of winged insect pests. They race tirelessly to and fro across the landscape, weaving a magic tapestry of search, until it would seem that not a cubic inch of atmosphere remains without its invisible thread of flight.
No. 128.
ROUGH-WINGED SWALLOW.
A. O. U. No. 617. Stelgidopteryx serripennis (Aud.).
Description.—Adult: Warm brownish gray or snuff-brown, including throat and breast; thence passing insensibly below to white of under tail-coverts; wings fuscous. Young birds exhibit some rusty edging of the feathers above, especially on the wings, and lack the peculiar, recurved hooks on the edge of the outer primary. Size a little larger than the next. Length 5.00-5.75 (127-146.1); wing 4.30 (109.2); tail 1.85 (47); bill from nostril .21 (5.3).
Recognition Marks.—Medium Swallow size; throat not white; warmish brown coloration, and brownish suffusion below fading to white on belly. It is easy to distinguish between this and the succeeding species if a little care is taken to note the general pattern of underparts.
Nesting.—Nest, in crevices of cliffs, at end of tunnels in sand banks, or in crannies of bridges, etc.; made of leaves, grasses, feathers, and the like,—bulky or compact according to situation. Eggs, 4-8, white. Av. size, .74 × .51 (18.8 × 13). Season: May 20-June 5, June 20-July 10; two broods.
General Range.—United States at large, north to Connecticut, southern Ontario, southern Minnesota, British Columbia, etc., south thru Mexico to Costa Rica. Breeds thruout United States range and south in Mexico.
Range in Washington.—Summer resident, of general distribution, save in mountains, thruout the State. More common east of the mountains, where it has taken a great fancy to banks of irrigating ditches, especially where abrupt.
Migrations.—Spring: First week in April; Tacoma, April 3, 1905, April 6, 1906 and 1908. Fall: c. Sept. 1.
Authorities.—Cotyle serripennis, Bonap. Baird, Rep. Pac. R. R. Surv. IX. pt. II. 1858, 314. C&S. L¹(?). L². Rh. Ra. J. B. E.
Specimens.—(U. of W.) Prov. P. B. E.
It not infrequently happens that some oversight, or want of discrimination, on the part of early observers condemns a species to long obscurity or unending misapprehension. The Bank Swallow was at once recognized by the pioneer naturalists of America as being identical with the well-known European bird, but it was not till 1838 that Audubon distinguished its superficially similar but structurally different relative, the Rough-wing. The cloak of obscurity still clings to the latter, altho we begin to suspect that it may from the first have enjoyed its present wide distribution East as well as West. Hence, in describing it, we take the more familiar Bank Swallow as a point of departure, and say that it differs thus and so and so.
In the first place it has those curious little hooklets on the edge of the wing (especially on the outer edge of the first primary)—nobody knows what they are for. They surely cannot be of service in enabling the bird to cling to perpendicular surfaces, for they are bent forward, and the bird is not known to cling head-downward. It is easy to see how the bird might brace its wings against the sides of its nesting tunnel to prevent forcible abduction, but no one knows of a possible enemy which might be circumvented in this way.
