Sept
1.
Nest, of mud, generally retort- or pocket-shaped, beneath cliffs or the eaves of a barn or other building. Eggs, four to five, white, with numerous spots of cinnamon-, olive-, or rufous-brown, 81 x 55.
During the nesting season these Swallows are of very local distribution. They will return year after year to their rows of mud tenements beneath the eaves of some barn or outbuilding, and, although familiar birds to residents of the immediate vicinity, they may be entire strangers to those who have never had a colony of these birds settled near them.
Like Barn Swallows, they are masons, and they may be seen on muddy shores rolling the little pellets of clay which enter into the construction of their nest.
In the fall they are found in flocks with other Swallows, but at all times they may be readily identified by their pale rufous upper tailcoverts, which make a conspicuous field-mark. The CUBAN CLIFF SWALLOW (612.1. Petrochelidon fulva) has been once recorded from the Dry Tortugas, Florida (Scott, Auk, vii, 1890, p. 265). 613. Chelidon erythrogaster (Bodd.). BARN SWALLOW. Ad.- Forehead, throat, and upper breast chestnut-rufous; rest of the under parts washed with the same color; upper parts steel-blue; tail deeply forked, all but the middle feathers with white spots on their inner webs. Im. - Upper SWALLOWS. parts mixed with dusky, forehead and throat paler; outer tail-feathers shorter. L., 6.95; W., 4.67; T., 3.30; B. from N., 24.