26 CYPSELIDJE. 



it so small did the nest look, and such the apparently uncomfort- 

 able attitude of the occupant. 



" Near the nest was a colony of bats, Nycticejus castaneus. I 

 killed out of the lot in one shot twenty-one bats. The palm was 

 alive with them and with the Swifts. I noticed these birds 

 clustering on the leaf of the palm between the ribs of the fronds. 

 When moving up and down, they crawled with a shuffling kind of 

 motion, as if their legs were too short for progression/' 



Mr. W. Theobald again has the following on the breeding of 

 this bird in Monghyr and Prome * : " Lays in the third week of 

 June and in July. Eggs, three in number, long pyriform ; size, 

 0*80 inch by 0-45 inch ; colour pure white. Xest of vegetable 

 down, with a few feathers, agglutinated with mucus to the frond of 

 the Borassus.'' 



Major Bingham writes : " I have only found it breeding at 

 Allahabad in March, April, and May, and again in July and 

 August. The little nests are made of agglutinated feathers in 

 shape like a little watch-pocket, and stuck against the underside 

 of such leaves of the toddy-palm as have been bent down by the 

 wind. The usual number of eggs is three, but I have found 

 four." 



Mr. James Aitken makes the following remarks : "Palm trees 

 are scarce in Berar, but wherever a solitary one rears its head 

 there may be found the Palm-Swift flying round and round it. I 

 once, and once only, saw several of these birds flying about a grove 

 of mango trees where there was not a palm tree within miles." 



Writing of the South Konkan Mr. G. Vidal says: "Seen in 

 large numbers at Mill van and Vengorla. I only know at present 

 of two Palmyra palms (Borassus JlabeUiformis) in the whole 

 district, one at Bankot and one at Mai van. At Bankot, in April, 

 I saw a pair of these Swifts flying out of the solitary Palmyra, but 

 found no nests. At Malvan, in January and February, I saw 

 numbers flying in and out of the leaves of the one tree theiv. 

 They must have had nests, but the tree was very high, and I 

 could get no one to climb it. There are no Palmyras at Ratnagiri, 

 and as the species is common there about the cocoanut and betel- 

 nut gardens, it is probable that, as Mr. Davidson noted in Mysore 

 (vide S. F. vii. 172), they nest here in betel-nut, if not in cocoa- 

 nut palms also. There are certainly fifty times too many birds at 

 Malvan to find accommodation in the one Palmyra palm, though it 

 is evidently a favourite haunt." 



Mr. J. Davidson writes: " I notice that both Dr. Jerdon and 

 Mr. Hume state that the common Palm-Swifts (C. batassiensis) 

 invariably breed on the Palmyra palm. In this district the Swift 

 is rather common, and the Palmyra palm is very rare; indeed I 

 have not seen more than a dozen trees altogether. On almost all 

 of them I have found the Swift breeding, but from the number of 



* Mr. Theobald here con r ounded the present and the next species. The 

 former is found at Monghyr and the latter at Prome. ED. 



