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In answer to Rob Woods' original question about what Barn Swallows did for nesting locations before barns, the answer is described in one of my favorite series of books, A. C. Bent's Life History series: "They found security and protection in rocky caves, in crevices in rocky cliffs, on shelves of projecting rocks where some protection from above was afforded, and even in holes or natural cavities in cutbanks." Here's a quote from Ernest Ingersoll's "Knocking Round the Rockies," describing the primitive nesting habits of the barn swallow, as he found them at Hot Sulphur Springs, Colo., in 1874: "The niches in the rocks were occupied by large colonies of barn-swallows. . . . Sometimes the niches in the lime-rock (the whole mass of which had been built up of deposits from the mineral waters) were so close together that there would be half a dozen in a square yard; yet every one had its burnt-breast tenants, and the twittering silenced the gurgle and sputter of the rapid stream at the ledge's base. The floor of each niche was hollowed out, so that it only required to be softly carpeted to constitute it a perfect nest. For this grass-stems and a few large feathers were used, precisely as in our eastern barns. But here the birds had greatly economized labor by occupying the niches, for they needed not to build the firm underpinning and stout high walls which become necessary in the barn, or on an exposed rock shelf, to prevent the eggs and young from rolling out; all these happy birds had to do was to furnish a home already made." According to the Birds of North America account, the shift to 'artificial' nest sites was basically total by the mid-twentieth century. Nesting in 'natural' sites is now rare enough to command a printed note to document it. All the best, Lance
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