THE SWIFTS 



180' 



the valuable white nests, which are free from moss, being formed by Collocalia 

 fnciphaga. Writing of the habits of this species in Ceylon, Colonel Legge states 

 that the breeding season lasts from March till June, and that the nests form large 

 colonies. Many of these are known, from seeing the birds haunt the vicinity of 

 certain precipitous hills, but few have been visited and examined on account of their 

 general inaccessibility. The narrator then describes his visit to a cave on the 

 twenty-second day of May, when 

 nearly all the nests contained 

 young, two being the average 

 number. " It is noteworthy, that 

 the partially-fledged young, which 

 were procured on this occasion for 

 me, and which I kept for the 

 night, scrambled out on the ex- 

 terior of the nests, and slept in 

 an upright position with the bill 

 pointing straight up. This is evi- 

 dently the normal mode of roost- 

 ing resorted to by this species. 

 The interior of this cave, with its 

 numbers of active tenants, pre- 

 sented a singular appearance. 

 The bottom was filled with a vast 

 deposit of liquid guano, reaching, 

 I was informed, to a depth of thirty 

 feet, and composed of droppings, 

 old nests, and dead young fallen 

 from above, the whole mingled 

 into a loathsome mass with the 

 water lodged in the crevice, and 

 causing an awful stench, which 

 would have been intolerable for 

 a moment even, had not the hun- 

 dreds of frightened little birds, as 

 they screamed and whirred in and 

 out of the gloomy cave, with a 



LONG-WINGED TREE SWIFT 



(One-half natural size. ) 



hum like a storm in a ship's rig- 

 ging, powerfully excited my in- 

 terest, and produced a long ex- 

 amination of the colony. This guano deposit is a source of considerable profit to 

 the estate, the hospitable manager of which informed us that he had manured one 

 hundred acres of coffee with it during that season." 



A third subfamily {Macropterygincz} is represented by the five spe- 

 cies of the genus Macropteryx, which ranges from India, through Burma 

 and the Malayan Archipelago, to the Solomon islands. They present such marked 



Tree Swifts 



