CHIMNEY SAVIFT 275 



these trees extend upward and outward from the surface of the water, curving 

 inward some distance up, and in most of them, between the water and base of 

 the tree proper, there are openings large enough for a canoe to enter. By push- 

 ing our canoe in these intervals between the roots, we were able to examine the 

 interiors of the hollow trees. In these we found the swifts nesting in their 

 primitive fashion, the nests being fastened to the interior walls about midway 

 down. 



T. E. Musselman wrote me in 1935 that he has noted that swifts 

 are beginning to use silos as nesting sites in the Middle West. 



Eggs. — [Author's note : The chimney swift lays three to six eggs, 

 more commonly four or five. These are pure white and only mod- 

 erately glossy. In shape they vary from elliptical-ovate to cylin- 

 drical-ovate. The measurements of 56 eggs average 20.10 by 13.24 

 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure 21.59 by 

 13.46, 21.34 by 13.72, 17.53 by 13.72, and 18.29 by 12.70 millimeters.] 



Young. — The young swift starts life in a world of danger. It 

 comes from the egg a blind little naked thing, no bigger than your 

 fingernail, lying in a frail cradle of sticks that overhangs a black 

 "drop into nothing." The little swift, however, is equipped to deal 

 with the dangers of its birthplace. Very early in its life it can cling 

 and crawl ; it can hide under its nest ; it can move about over the walls 

 of the abyss in which it lives; and, when the time for flying comes, it 

 can clamber toward the free air, taking, perhaps, the longest and 

 last walk of its career. 



Frederic H. Kennard illustrates in his notes the hardiness of the 

 young swift when it comes from the egg. He says : "On July 15, 1918, 

 somewhere between 9 and 10 a. m. at Duck Lake, Maine, I found 

 among the ashes of the fireplace, in a friend's unoccupied camp, a 

 chimney swift's nest which I had been watching and which, when I 

 had last seen it, the previous noon, in the chimney, had contained 

 two eggs. It had evidently been dislodged from its proper place by 

 a thunderstorm and torrential rain of the night before. 



"The nest and both eggshells lay among the ashes, close together, 

 at the back of the large fireplace. Both eggs were broken, and the 

 shells lay just where they had fallen. One of them was evidently 

 addled, while the content of the other was apparently missing. 



"Imagine my surprise, when after hunting for some time, I discov- 

 ered that the content of the other egg was a tiny swiftlet, which, 

 blind and with the back of its skull badly bruised and suffused with 

 blood from its fall down the chimney, had nevertheless made its way 

 out through the ashes, dropping down the thickness of a brick from 

 the fire place proper to the hearth beyond, then across the hearth; 

 and had climbed, in a style worthy of a young hoatzin, and was still 

 clinging in an upright position to the finely woven wire fender that 

 had enclosed the fireplace, but which I had moved aside in order to 

 facilitate inspection. 



