Stelgidopteryx serripennis
Order Passeriformes
Family Hirundinidae
Adult.— Upper parts dark brown; throat and breast brownish-gray; belly white.
Immature.— Similar to adult, but wings tinged with cinnamon.
Nest, in holes in sand banks, or in a crevice of masonry or a ledge of rock.
The Rough-winged Swallow is a summer resident of the lower Hudson Valley, locally common at Riverdale, Hastings, and Sing Sing; it occurs here and there in northern New Jersey, and in southwestern Connecticut as far north as Hartford. It breeds locally in Berkshire County and at Longmeadow, Mass., and will probably be found elsewhere in western New England. It arrives in April and leaves in August.
The Rough-winged Swallow often breeds in banks with Bank Swallows, and can then hardly be distinguished from the Bank Swallow except by a trained observer; the upper parts are very similar, but the throat of the Rough-wing is darker, and the middle of the breast lighter than in the Bank Swallow, so that there is no appearance of a dark band across the breast. The choice of a nesting-site is often a clue to the bird’s identity; if one sees in the region above defined what is apparently a Bank Swallow entering a crevice in masonry or in a natural ledge of rock, or a hole in a building, one may be pretty confident that it is a Rough-winged Swallow.
Hoffmann – A Guide to the Birds of New England and Eastern New York (1904)