Birds of Celebes: Hirundinidae. 
361 
its mature dress. One from Timorlaut in the Dresden Museum is especially 
dark below. 
H.javanica is easily distinguishable from H. rustica by its wanting, when 
adult, the long forked tail of that species, by the absence of the black pectoral 
collar and by the brown tint of its under surface. 
The nearest relative of H. javanica is H. neoccena of Australia. This form 
is larger and has a longer tail. It is a migratory bird in Tasmania and New 
South Wales, as Gould observed (Handbook I, 108), according to whom it 
was also found in New Guinea by Wallace. This record is of course in the 
highest degree probable, though no confirmation of it has been found since. 
The Java Swallow is a familiar bird in the Minahassa. In sending the 
above-described nest the Drs. Sarasin write: “This comes from our house at 
Kema, nearly every room of which was at first tenanted by a pair of Swallows. 
Where it could be managed we left the pretty creatures in peace, but in the 
library we were obliged to remove the nest. The birds, however, are hardly to 
be driven away; they were always making renewed attempts to take possession 
of the old spot. It seems, besides, that every pair claims a room • or a closet 
for itself and will not put up with the presence of another. The song of these 
birds is very melodious and agreeable, albeit gentle; it calls to mind the soft 
babbling of a little brook”. 
Bernstein (2) and Davison (26) write similarly on the adhesiveness of 
these birds to their old nesting-spot ; the latter says : — “about a week after 
the first brood have flown the old birds begin to remove the topmost feathers 
of the nest, replacing them by fresh ones. Three eggs are then again laid, 
and a second brood reared. After this brood have flown, the old birds st ill 
continue to occupy the nest at night, or, more correctly, to occupy the edge 
of the nest, for they do not get into it, but merely sit close together on its 
edge. The same nest is occupied the following year, the upper feathers being 
removed and replaced by fresh ones. Should the nest have been destroyed a 
fresh one is built on the same site”. 
The wonderful attachment of birds for house and home should always be 
remembered in connection with the vast return wave of migratory birds to their 
summer nesting-haunts, a wave which cannot be compared with one of the sea 
driven blindly before the wind, but a living wave wherein, we may suppose, 
that each of the myriad old and, perhaps, young individuals composing it, 
is striving towards a particular spot, hundreds or, may be, thousands of miles 
away. Here, as we know, they are generally to be found in due season. 
In his “Neu Guinea” 1866, 162, Dr. Finsch marks Hirundo nigricans 
Vieill. as occurring in Celebes, but no confirmation of this statement has come 
to hand. Pctrochclidon nigricans ranges from New Guinea and Kei to Australia, 
a subspecies also occurring in Timor and Flores. 
Meyer & Wiglesworth, Birds of Celebes (Nov. 3rd, 1897). 
46 
