Ornithological dictionary of British birds / By G. Montagu.

  • George Montagu
Date:
1831
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Ornithological dictionary of British birds / By G. Montagu. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    forwardness for next spring,—supposes they may have been abandoned on account of the soil proving either too hard or too loose. It appears more probable, I think, that some accident may in such cases have befallen the birds; for they seem to be always careful in choosing the sort of bank best suited for their mode of mining. In most of the numerous localities which I have examined, they always made choice of a very hard bed of alluvial sand, in an escarpment either facing a river, a quarry, or a sand-pit, and from ten to thirty feet from the base, being evidently most in fear of enemies from below; while above I have often seen their galleries within a foot of the surface. When the escarpment again is very high, they prefer a middle height, an instance of which occurs at the chalk-pit, behind the Hanging Wood at Charlton, in Kent.** | Sometimes they build in old walls, and, we are told, in hollows of trees. The nest is composed of straw and dried fibres, lined with fea- thers. *It is common in the Orkneys.* The eggs are four or five in number, quite white, like those of the window swallow, but rather smaller; weighing about twenty-two grains. The manners of this species is much like that of the window swallow, and they are often seen in company together, skimming over water in pursuit of gnats and other subaquatic insects. *The remark of White and Wilson, that the Bank Swallow shuns human neighbourhood, does not accord at all with my observations. “It is,” says White, “ fera naturd, at least in this part of the king- dom, disclaiming all domestic attachments, and haunting wild heaths and commons; while the other species are remarkably gentle and domesticated, and never seem to think themselves safe but under the protection of man. There are in this parish, in the sand-pits and banks of the lakes of Wolmer Forest, several colonies of these birds, and yet they are never seen in the village, nor do they at all frequent the cottages that are scattered about in that wild district.” Wilson also says that it “ appears to be the least intimate with man of all our swallows.”? On the contrary, the colony above-mentioned at Charlton in Kent, is in the vicinity of a number of cottages, while two lime-kilns are in constant operation just below the bank. A colony again at Catrine in Ayrshire, is not only within a few yards of a party of quarry-men constantly at work, but is not a gunshot from a row of nearly a hun- dred houses, close by the doors of which I have seen the birds 1 Architecture of Birds, p. 21. * Nat. Hist. of Selborne, ii. 297. > American Ornithology, p. 46.
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