532 



NESTS AXD EGGS Of AUSTRALIAN BIRDS. 



marvellous speed of the owner. The Spine-tailed Swift lives solely 

 on winged insects. A correspondent, writing from the Lower 

 Tarwin, graphically depicts some of its habits:- — "Day by day 

 those birds are my constant companions, now swooping low along 

 the heather, hawking in wide circles high in air, or cutting and 

 glancing through the thick smoke of bush fires, I see them at 

 early dawn, while the heather is yet wot with dew, solitary birds 

 skimming low along the fields. Once in a while a faint silvei-y twitter 

 proves that the birds are not devoid of voice. Night closes ; no sound, 

 save the low breathing moan of the distant sea. Suddenly, ' swsh, whiz,' 

 past goes a Swift, cutting through the darkness with the speed of a 

 bullet, showing the wanderer they are with him still." Can it be 

 possible tliat these restless birds fly ever by day and night till they 

 return to the land of their nativity in the north ? Tliey have never 

 been ob.servcd to pcrcli in Australia, as far as my knowledge goes.* 



Mr. Alan Owston, Yokohama, informs me that the Spine-tailed 

 Swift breeds under the Kegon Waterfall, near Nikko, Japan, Tlie 

 rock under the fall consists of alternate hard and soft layers, making 

 a series of shelves, and the Swifts breed in the recesses between the 

 shelves. Tlic outer edges of these shelves or ledges are so rotten that 

 the}' will not bear the weight of a man, therefore the place is practically 

 inaccessible. 



425. — CoLLocAijA FUANC'K'A. Gmclin. 

 C. terro' rri/iiur, Ramsay. 



GREY-RUMPED SWTFTLET. 



Figure. — Gould — Sharpe : Birds of New Guinea, vol. iv., pi. 38. 

 Reftrtnie. — Cat. Birds Brit. Mii«,, vol. xvi., p. 503. 



Gedfira iihirnl Dix/rihii/iiiii r -}ior\hcvn Queens'and ; also Fiji, 

 Samoa, Friendly and Solomon Islands, Tcrnat'\ Mauritius, and 

 Bourbon. 



*I possess two notes of the other (White-rumped) ."^wift perrhinp. One by 

 my son, when a student at the Ilorlirnllnral School, Burnley. In a note read 

 before the Fiild Naturalists' flub, ho stated : " One day in March (iSos) this 

 bird came and alighted on a path not ten feet from where T was working. It 

 seemed unable to balance itself on its feet, and after a sernnd or two took its 

 departure. This particular bird may have been over-fatigued and consequently 

 dropped behind. Other .Swifts were passing at the time." 



The other note is by Dr. \V. Macgillivrav, who writes: "When down at 

 I'ortland, i,)th February (iSqo), my brother and 1 saw a groat number nf Swifts 

 (Micropus pacificus). There must have boon thousands Hying over the town 

 low down. They wore passing for about two hours, and seomod to come along 

 Ihe coast from the west, and to fly in a north-easterly direction. .\ large 

 number was passing over Heywood, which is about sixteen miles inland, when 

 we reached there by train about half-an-hoiir later; and the same evening A 

 friend of mine — Mr. Jas. Kdgar, of I'ine Ildls, near Marrow — tells me n large 

 flock took np their quarters for the nighl in a largo gum tree near his house, and 

 kept up a constant twittering till it was qtiite dark." 



