3 TriE SWALLOWS AND SWIFTS. 



feather on each side prolonged for four or five inches 

 and as thin as a fine wire. This bird makes its " clay 

 built nest" in the hot season, or the beginning of the 

 monsoon, not so often about the dwellings of man as 

 about his other works, bridges, for example, and 

 wells, and especially road culverts. It likes to be 

 near water. It usually lays three prettily speckled 

 eggs. 



But by far the commonest of the whole family in 

 this Presidency is the Red-backed Swallow (Hirundo 

 erythropygia ; Jerdon calls it dauricd). It is especially 

 abundant about hilly or rocky country. Just at the 

 beginning of the cold season, in the morning, 

 one comes upon them in some places in such numbers 

 that the air feels overcrowded and they jostle each 

 other on the telegraph wires. The upper parts of the 

 Red-backed Swallow, including the wings and tail, 

 are black, excepting only the sides of the head 

 and the "small" of the back, which are light, rusty 

 red. The under-parts are white. The whole bird, 

 especially when young, looks dingy by comparison 

 with the Wire-tail. The tail is deeply forked. This 

 species also builds a mud nest in the hot season, 

 under some bridge or overhanging rock, or a ledge 

 in any building not regularly, inhabited ; but its 

 architecture is eccentric. The egg chamber is glo- 

 bular, and the entrance to it is by a neck as long 

 as the bird has leisure to make it. Barnes says that 

 the bird goes on lengthening the neck after the eggs 

 are laid. There are usually three white eggs. 



Our fourth swallow is the Dusky Crag Martin. 

 Jerdon called it Cotyle concolor, but that has been 

 improved upon, and it appears in Barnes as 



