102 BIKDS OF LANCASHIRE. 



Swifts breed in the stone quarries. They never build a 

 nest for themselves, and unless one is seized ready 

 made, the eggs are laid on the bare stones, the first 

 week in June being the usual time for deposition, and 

 two being the invariable number. Mr. T. Altham once 

 found three eggs lying together, but as two were much 

 incubated and the third was quite fresh, this last 

 had probably been laid by another bird. Before their 

 departure in autumn Swifts collect in considerable 

 flocks, careering about in the evening, and filling the 

 air with their screams ; in the Mag. of Xat. Hist. 

 for 1839 Dr. Skaife says that near Blackburn on July 

 25, 1838, he saw one of these flocks containing as many 

 as several hundred individuals. It may be here re- 

 marked that the Swift is chronicled as arriving in 1774 

 at Blackburn on April 28 (White's " Nat. Hist, of 

 Selborne," ed. Jesse, 1851, pp. 197, 271), and the 

 observer was no doubt the Rev. John White, Avho was 

 vicar of Blackburn from 1772 to 1780, brother of the 

 naturalist, and himself the author of a " Natural History 

 of Gibraltar " (" Hist. Blackburn," Aln-am, 1877, p. 296). 



WHITE-BELLIED SWIFT. 



Cypselus melba (Linnaeus). 



A rare straggler, of which the two following occur- 

 rences are known : — one, recorded by Mr. S. Carter in 

 the Zoologist for 1863, the bird being captured in St. 

 Mary's Church, Hulme, Manchester, on October 17 of 

 that year ; the other, killed near Preston in August, 

 1879, and now in the possession of Mr. Peter Sefton of 

 Baxenden. 



