Page:The Common Birds of Bombay.djvu/53

Rh with the points of them, but they are always extended and evenly curved from tip to tip, like a bow, the slim body of the bird being the arrow. I have dwelt on this at some length because it is by far the plainest outward difference between a Swift and a Swallow.

I reckon that two Swifts and at least four Swallows may be included among the Common Birds of Bombay (Hirundo rustica). First comes our own familiar English Swallow, which spends the winter with us and the summer with our families; at least, it is pleasant to fancy so, though I am afraid that the line of migration does not lie exactly from England to India However that may be, passengers on their way home in the month of May are often joined in the Red Sea, or the Mediterranean, by a Swallow travelling the same way, which spends a night perhaps in the rigging, then tires of such sluggish progress and goes on alone. It returns to India in September or October, and is tolerably common in Bombay all the cold season. I need not describe it.

Another purely Indian species, sufficiently like the English bird to be mistaken for it by a careless observer, is the Wire-tail Swallow (Hirundo filifera), which is also found in Bombay and loves to course up and down wet, grassy ditches. It is a splendid bird. The upper parts are dark, glossy, "steel blue," gleaming in the sun, the top of the head is rich, rusty red, and the under-parts are as white as a shirt front fresh from the dhobie—I mean from a laundry. But its most distinctive mark is the tail, which is not long and forked, like the tail of the English Swallow, but short and almost square, with the outermost