‘NESTING OF THE INDIAN HIRUNDINES,” 45 
rally affixed to the rafters of an outhouse or other building, They 
do not seem to mind the presence of man in the least. The nest 
of the Wire-tailed Swallow is generally placed under the cornice of a 
bridge, or under the bridge itself, sometimes under an overhanging 
shelf of rock, but always in close vicinity to water. That of the Crag 
Martin is placed under a projection in the face of a rocky cliff, far 
from the haunts of man, or under the eaves of a house in his very 
midst. The nests of all three are well lined with soft feathers, and 
they often serve for a second brood, the feathers only being renewed. 
The eggs, three in number, are very handsome, being white with a 
delicate pink tint when fresh and unblown, thickly spotted and 
speckled with bright red-brown and inky-purple, but the markings 
on the eggs of the latter are not so bright or so well defined as on 
those of the two former. The nest of the Mosque Swallow 
(Hirundo erythropygia) is built after avery different pattern, but the 
material used is the same, viz., mud, which the bird procures from 
the banks of the nearest pond or river. Both sexes assist in making 
the nest, which is of a peculiar shape, and has been, not inaptly, 
described as retort-shape, or rather half-retort. It is usually affixed 
to the roof of a cave, bridge, or culvert, or to the under-surface of 
the ledge ofa rock. They construct a large bulb-like chamber, five 
or six inches in diameter, with a tubular passage of varying length 
reaching occasionally to quite nine inches, but in general the length 
is not more than four or five. The male bird often goes on length- 
ening this passage after the eggs are laid and while the female is 
sitting on them. The nest is well lined with soft feathers, and the 
eggs, three in number, are pure unspotted white. After the birds 
have once chosen a site for a nest, they are very hard to drive away. 
T have often broken open nests to see if any eggs had been laid, and 
they have always been repaired, and I have eventually obtained 
eggs from them. ‘To such an extent is the constructive faculty 
developed in these birds that they often build two or more nests 
before they are satisfied, and they are known to make a winter resi- 
dence for themselves in which eggs are never found. They are 
solitary breeders. Not so, however, the Cliff Swallows (Hirundo 
fluvicola), whose immense clusters of nests often amount to from one 
hundred and fifty to two hundred in number. They also build 
retort-shape nests, but in quite a different fashion, the bulbs or 
chamber portions being affixed to the under-surface of a shelving 
rock, or under a bridge with the tubes hanging down or rather a 
