THE WHITE-HUMPED BLACK SWIFT. 3 



other male and female they were purplish black ; bill black ; irides dark 

 brown. (Davison.) 



Length 5' 7 inches, tail 2' 2, wing 5 '3, tarsus '4, bill from gape '8. The 

 female is rather smaller. The fork of the tail measures '3. 



The White-rumped Black Swift was observed by Mr. Davison in the 

 south of Tenasserim. It has not yet been noted from any other part of 

 Burmah. In the month of January I once observed a pair of Swifts 

 between Pegu and Rangoon, and found their nest under a wooden bridge 

 at Wanetkone. I was unable to shoot either of the birds, and I am con- 

 sequently unable to state with certainty whether they were the present 

 species or the allied C. affinis. As this latter is pretty certain, however, to 

 occur in Burmah, I append a short description of the bird *. 



C. subfurcatus has a rather wide range. It is found in South China, Cochin 

 China, the Malay peninsula, Sumatra, Java, and probably also in Borneo. 

 Mr. Hume states that he has seen a specimen which was shot in India north 

 of Chanda ; and Colonel Godwin- Austen records it from tlie Khasia hills. 

 It probably occurs throughout Burmah and the Indo-Burmese countries. 



It is a resident species in South China; and Mr. Swinhoe thus describes 

 its nest : (( It builds a nest under the eaves and rafters of houses, much 

 in the form of the House-Martin ; but the exterior coating of it differs in 

 being composed of thin layers of wool, hair, and dried grass, glued one 

 above the other with the saliva of the bird and lined internally with 

 feathers." The nest I found consisted entirely of grass and feathers glued 

 together, was very bulky, but extremely light ; it was fixed to the side of 

 a beam of the bridge, and the entrance was much prolonged and tubular, 

 this portion being fixed to the underside of the flooring of the bridge. 

 In Penang these birds build their nests in large clusters in houses and 

 ruined buildings. 



C. acuticauda, BL, from the north-west Himalayas, has been found in 

 the Andaman Islands, and is consequently not unlikely to visit Burmah 

 as a straggler. It has a wing varying, according to sex, from 6*4 to 

 6' 8 inches in length, and the whole upper plumage is black. It much 

 resembles C. apus, the European Swift. C. pekinensis, Swinhoe, appears 

 to be the Chinese representative of C. apus ; it is said to have occurred 

 in India, and it is likely to straggle into Burmah. 



CYPSELUS AFFINIS. 



Like C. subfurcatm, but differing in the following respects : in having a tail measuring 

 only 1-8 inch, the fork being only -1 or '15; in having no part of the plumage black 

 except the back, the head, wings and tail being brown, conspicuously lighter than the 

 back j in having the white of the chin and throat pure, with few or no brown shafts, 

 and in having this white abruptly defined from the surrounding brown, whereas in 

 C. subfurcatm the white is sullied and merges gradually into the surrounding dark parts. 



B2 



