Page:The Common Birds of Bombay.djvu/57

clustered together, and so stuck over with feathers on the outside that they look like one great, fluffy mass; but each of them has its own private entrance at the side. These are not only cradles for eggs and young, but dwellings in which the birds live all the year round. Regularly every evening the community gathers together, and after spending some time in playful evolutions in the air, as Jerdon says, "with much fluttering of their wings and a good deal of twittering talk," one after another swoops, with a "shivering scream," and pops into its bed. When there are young to be fed (which may be at any season, for they seem to have several broods in the year), the parent birds are coming and going all the day. Only two or three eggs are laid at a time, which are white, like the eggs of all Swifts. The Common Indian Swift is a black, or blackish, bird, with the chin and the small of the back pure white, so it need not be mistaken for any other bird. Its tail is short and square.

I have seen other Swifts and Swallows in Bombay. Of the Cliff Swallow (Hirundo fluvicola) I am certain, and I think I have seen a Crag Martin about Malabar Hill which was larger and paler than the common one. Then there is that grand bird, the Alpine Swift (Cypselus melba), which I have shot within a few miles of Bombay. But a bird that gets up before daylight and goes to bed long after dark and flies all day at a hundred miles an hour may be seen anywhere.