THE TYPICAL SWIFTS. 
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brown. Total length, 7 inches; culmen, 0-3; wing, 6-7; 
centre tail-feathers, 17 ; lateral ones, a'p; tarsus, o’35. 
Adult Female. — Similar to the male. Total length, 6 '6 inches; 
wing, 6-4. 
Young. — Similar to the adults, but browner, the forehead 
whiter, and the feathers having whitish edgings. 
Eange in Great Britain, — A common summer visitor to England 
and Scotland, but rarer and of more irregular occurrence in the 
north and west of the latter country. In Ireland, according 
to Mr. R. J. Ussher, it breeds in every county, sometimes 
nesting in cliffs. 
Eange outside tlie British Islands. — The Swift is distributed in 
summer over the greater part of Europe, and winters in South 
Africa and Madagascar. It has been noticed as high as 70° N. 
lat. in Norway, and has been found breeding at 69° N. lat. 
Mr. Seebohm says that it is only an accidental visitor to the 
neighbourhood of Archangel, and is not found higher than 
lat. 60° N. in the Urals. He also records the species as breed- 
ing regularly in Dauria, Mongolia, and North China, but the 
Swift of these regions is doubtless the pale form called by 
Swinhoe Cypselus pekinmsis, a light-coloured eastern race of 
our Common Swift, which ranges eastward from Sind to North 
China, and winters to the southward, though it appears also 
to visit South Africa on its migrations. Another light-coloured 
form of M. apus is the Pallid Swift {M. murinus), which visits 
Egypt and the Mediterranean countries in summer, and ex- 
tends its eastern range as far as Sind, wintering in South 
Africa. 
Hatits — The Swift is one of our latest arrivals in summer, 
and one of the first of the migrants to leave our shores. It 
comes towards the end of April or early in' May, and departs 
in August, though a few belated individuals are seen as late as 
the end of September on our southern coasts, and even later 
records of its stay have been established. Its approach north- 
ward is very gradual, for whereas the first arrivals make their 
appearance in the South of Europe in March, it is not till April 
that they appear in Central Europe, and in the more northern 
parts of their range, such as Lapland, they are not seen till 
