1 88 THE MALA Y PRO VIA CE 



range from India through the Malay countries to Australia, but have also one 

 outlying African species. Phayre's pitta (Anthocincla phayrei), distinguished by 

 the aigrette-like plumes on the upper part of the neck, inhabits Burma and 

 Tenasserim. To an allied genus, distinguished by the absence of these plumes, 

 belongs the giant pitta (Pitta ccerulea), of Tenasserim, the Malay Peninsula, 

 Sumatra, and Borneo. It is the largest member of the group, measuring about 

 11| inches in length. 



Among the so-called picarian birds, the large needle-tailed swift 

 (Chcetura indica) ranges from Ceylon and southern India to Assam 

 and the adjacent districts. The allied tree-swifts, specially characterised by their 

 minute nests affixed to the branches or leaves of trees, lay only one large egg, 

 which so completely fills the nest that, when brooding, the females are com- 

 pelled to hold on to the supporting branch or leaf to prevent falling out, as indeed 

 are the young. These swifts, represented by half a dozen species, are distributed 

 from India through the Malay Peninsula and Archipelago to New Guinea. The 

 smallest members of the group are included in the genus Collocalia, whose distri- 

 butional area includes not only India, the Malay countries, and Polynesia, but also 

 Madagascar. Their nests consist of nothing but saliva, hardened by the air and 

 stuck to rocks in the shape of a ball. These are the well-known edible nests 

 imported in such immense quantities into China, those of most value being the 

 almost pure white ones of Collocallia fuciphaga, a species inhabiting the islands 

 lying between Mauritius and Samoa, and also found on the Nicobars and 

 Andamans, as well as in Tenasserim and Arakan, where it invariably keeps to 

 the shore. 



Nightjar, Frog- In another group the horned nightjar (Chordiles cerviniceps), 



Mouths, etc which i n Sikhim and elsewhere spends its days in caves, belongs to 

 a genus widely spread over southern Asia, the Malay Archipelago, Australia, and 

 tropical America, and is distinguished by the absence of bristles on the beak. The 

 allied nocturnal frog-mouths, so called from the enormous size of the gape, are 

 distributed over India, the Malay Archipelago, and Australia. Some build nests of 

 twigs resembling those of pigeons, while others form for their one egg only a loose 

 basis of leaves and feathers on horizontally growing boughs. The group includes the 

 genera Podargus and Batrachostomus, the members of the latter being exclusively 

 Oriental, and represented in this area by B. hodgsoni, which inhabits the country 

 between Sikhim and northern Tenasserim. Among the broad - billed rollers, 

 represented by half a dozen species spread over the tropical countries of the Eastern 

 Hemisphere, the wide-beaked Eurystomus orientalis ranges through the Malay 

 countries into China as far as Manchuria. 



In the bee-eater group, the square-tailed species are represented 

 both in India and the Malay Peninsula by Swinhoe's bee-eater 

 (Melittophagus swinhoei), characterised by its habit of awaiting its prey on some 

 dead twig, instead of hawking for it in the air like the majority of its kindred 

 The bearded bee-eaters, which, in place of inhabiting the plains, frequent clearings 

 in the forests of the higher mountains, never associate in parties, but go about in 

 pairs, and are rarely found far away from their nest, which is placed in the hole 

 of some tree. A well-known member of the group is the scarlet-bearded bee-eater 



