WHITE-RUMPED SWIFT 209 
The wings are relatively long, and the black tail is 
deeply forked. The throat is white. 
Mr. Mulder has a locally obtained specimen, and 
does not consider the occurrence of the bird to be 
unusual. 
Mr. Robert Hall found White-rumped Swifts 
breeding in the market-place of Yakutsk, in Asiatic 
Siberia. Assuming that these were our Australia- 
visiting birds, we still know practically nothing of 
their fly-lines or the time they take to pass from 
one end of their long journey to the other. Their 
general habits and diet seem to resemble those of the 
Spine-tailed Swift, but it is a species about which we 
have everything to learn. 
PALLID CUCKOO 
Heteroscenes palUdus pallidus 
Our fathers have told us of the delight which the 
children of England feel in the first hearing of the 
Cuckoo's call, sign that the winter is over and gone 
and the time of the singing of birds at hand. No 
less, I think, do all the memories of one's bush boy- 
hood cluster round the Pallid Cuckoo, which is our 
season's harbinger, and carries to every native-born 
ear all the bitter-sweet message of the short Aus- 
tralian spring : season of the incomparable wattle 
tarnished almost before its aureate wealth has fully 
crowned the trees, of one perfect September day of 
H 
