HIRTJNDO. 185 



ponds seek Cashmere and other more westerly localities to rear their 

 young in. 



The nests that I have seen resembled much those of the Wire- 

 tailed Swallow, but were deeper, and had the pellets of which they 

 were composed larger and a good deal mingled with grass &c. The 

 nest sent me from Murree is a very perfect, rather deep, half-saucer ; 

 two that I found containing young ones, fixed in corners of verandahs, 

 were mere quarters of very wide and shallow dishes ; another, in a 

 tiny niche in a beam, was a mere mud screen, shutting in the lower 

 half of the niche, with a few mud pellets inside, apparently to 

 round off the corners. All consisted exteriorly of pellets comp'osed 

 of mud, more or less mingled with dry fir-needles, straw, and the 

 like a coarser and far less tidy structure than that of the Wire- 

 tailed Swallow. Interiorly the lining appeared to be chiefly soft 

 feathers ; but there was a little fine grass, and in one some grey, 

 very soft fur, which I could not make out. 



There were four eggs, slightly incubated, in the Murree nest ; 

 but I believe they sometimes lay six. 



Dr. Scully writes from Nepal : " This Swallow breeds freely 

 about the valley in April and May ; young birds, just able to fly, 

 are often seen about the beginning of June." 



From Sikhim, Mr. Grammie writes : " The Common Swallow 

 arrives in this district in the beginning of February, and remains 

 till the end of October. They commence building about the end 

 of March, and place their nests in coolie-sheds, stables, outhouses, 

 or open verandahs. The nest is the usual mud structure, thickly 

 lined with soft feathers. As the soil there is not very adhesive, it 

 is mixed with a good deal of grass. In the stable at Eungbee, six 

 or eight pairs used to breed regularly ; and the syces, who took an 

 interest in them, were in the way of fixing up small boards here 

 and there, at angles with the roof, on which the Swallows readily 

 built. When undisturbed they get very tame, and I have seen a 

 pair cooly feeding their young on the nest when the heads of four 

 Europeans were within a foot of it. After ministering to the wants 

 of their family, they would perch within a yard of the spectators, 

 and give them a' pleasant little song. They breed at least twice in 

 the season, and, I think, occasionally three times. On the 29th 

 April I took a nest containing five hard-set eggs out of a kutcha 

 bungalow, and on visiting the same place on the 26th 'June fol- 

 lowing found that the same pair had, in the interim, built a rough 

 nest and reared a brood, which had flown about four days before, 

 and the parents were busy repairing the nest for a third batch of 

 eggs. The usual number of eggs is four or five." 



Lieut. H. E. Barnes, writing from Chaman, in Afghanistan, 

 remarks : " The Swallow is not uncommon ; still they do not occur 

 in such numbers as they do in Kandahar, where almost every out- 

 house contains nests. They breed in May. I found two nests 

 affixed to the roof of a ' Landy,' used as a native hospital. One 

 contained three young birds, and the other three eggs, spotted not 

 unlike those of Hirundo filifera ; one egg was pure white. They 

 measure 072 by 0-5." 



