Martin

a bird of the swallow family, well known from Hudson Bay to the Gulf. The male is a shiny blue-black fellow, with lighter underparts fading into a white center. The martin is one of the most familiar of birds, preferring a bird house or a hole in the cornice of some building. Four to five white eggs. An intelligent observer, Mr. Otto Widmann, quoted by Chapman, states that, during the season of feeding their young, a colony of sixteen pairs of martins made 3,277 visits to the nests, apparently with food, in a single day. This gives an average of over 100 visits per parent bird. The sixteen males had a total credit of 1,454, and the females, 1,823 visits; showing greater zeal on the part of the mother birds. A hundred chases after insects is a hard day's work for either sex.