440 



NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. 



ing cut belong here, and are two well-known European species, the Alpine swift 

 (M. melboL), larger, brownish gray, whitish beneath with a dusky gorget, from the 

 southern parts, and the common swift (M. apus), sooty black all over, except the 

 whitish throat, of more general distribution. It nests under the tiles of the roofs or 

 in church-steeples, and makes itself very conspicuous in the evening by circling and 

 hawking around the building in small troops, keeping up an incessant and penetrating 

 scream as they pass by witli incredible rapidity of flight. The North American white- 

 throated swift (M. melanoleucus) is nearly allied. 



FIG. 221. Micropus melba, Alpine swift (upper figure); M. apus, common European swift (lower figure). 



There is found in tropical America a group of small swifts, outwardly resembling 

 the swiftlets very much, but so closely allied to the above that a separate generic 

 name ( Tachornis) is now thought to be superfluous. A member of this group is the 

 Jamaican palm-swift (Micropus phceincobia), which we mention specially for its 

 interesting nest-building. Gosse describes namely two entirely different nests of this 

 bird according to whether they build in a cocoanut palm or a palmetto. lu the 

 former case they were formed chiefly in the hollow spathes of the leaves, and were 



