254 Mr. R. Svvinhoe on Furmosan Ornithology. 



15. Cypselus suBFURCATUs, Blyth. C. offinis, m\\\i, 'Ibis/ 

 1860, p. 48, et 1861, p. 30. 



This Swift is larger, much blacker, and with less furcate tail 

 than its near ally, C. affinis, J. E. Gray, from continental India. 

 Mr. Blyth has identified it as bis Malayan species. It is locally 

 distributed about South China, being generally resident in 

 places where it occurs. It builds a nest under the eaves and 

 rafters of houses much in the form of the House Martin {Che- 

 lidon urbica), but the exterior coating of it differs in being 

 composed of thin layers of wool, hair, and dried grass, glued 

 one above the other with the saliva of the bird, and lined in- 

 ternally with feathers. These nests serve the owners for a 

 house all the winter through. In them they rear their young 

 (only one bi'ood in the year), in them they roost every night, and 

 to them they frequently return during the day for rest after 

 their long-sustained flights. The pairs keep together all the 

 year, mingling however, in small parties, with others of the 

 species from the same neighbourhood. These parties never 

 seem to wander far, but seek their Dipterous food close to their 

 homes, regulating the altitude of their flights according to 

 the state of the atmosphere ; and when a pair are anxious for 

 rest, they leave the flock and fly down to their nests for repose, 

 in which they remain twittering for half an hour at a time, and 

 then dart out, pursuing and screaming after one another. In 

 the spring they patch up the same nest, and use it as before 

 till the close of the year. They seem to be very gentle birds, 

 and greatly attached to one another. A pair built a nest under 

 the beam of a verandah in my house at Amoy, and occupied 

 the same for three years. I had thus ample opportunities of 

 watching their habits. At Apes' Hill, Formosa, I met with 

 this species again. Here it was nesting, not however under the 

 roofs of houses, but in its primitive state under the ledges of 

 rocks, building the same Martin-like nest. It was only in S.W. 

 Formosa that I observed this bird ; and I may here remark that 

 I have never been able to trace it further north on the Chinese 

 coast than Amoy, which is a trifle higher latitude than its posi- 

 tion in Formosa. 



