166 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS 



place of swallows is taken very much by the 

 house-swift, which is very common there and 

 often drives the swallows out, as our swift, 

 which is one of our best-known town birds, 

 does at times with house-martins here. The 

 house -swift is very common in Calcutta, 

 much more so than any swallow-like bird I 

 have seen anywhere; it is smaller than our 

 swift, and much blacker, but it has a big white 

 patch on its back like the house-martin, 

 which makes it a prettier bird than ours. As 

 this swift is found in Africa as well as Asia, 

 it is one of man's lodgers over a very large 

 part of the world. 



Although swifts belong to a different family 

 from swallows, they are so much like them 

 that they are often called by the same name, 

 and so it is not surprising that the house- 

 swift of America is called the chimney-swallow 

 because it builds in chimneys as our common 

 swallow sometimes does. 



This bird also is smaller than our swift, and 

 of a blackish colour all over ; its tail is short 

 and not forked, but the quills of it end in sharp 

 horny spikes, which help the bird to support 

 itself against the wall to which it clings with 



