282 BULLETIN 17 6, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



possible that on the way to the nest, the birds may transfer the 

 twig to their beak, for William Brewster (1937b) in his Concord 

 journal says that on June 15, 1905, he saw one "drop into the 

 chimney this evening carrying a short twig held crossways in its 



An entry in Brewster's Concord journal also indicates that the swift 

 may be more nocturnal in its habits than is commonly believed. He 

 writes under the date August 5, 1893: "At about 2 a. m. I was sur- 

 prised to hear Chimney Swifts twittering outside the window. There 

 seemed to be a good many of them and the sound of their voices indi- 

 cated that they first circled about the house several times and then 

 went off towards the South. When I first heard the twittering, there 

 were also several birds making their peculiar rumbling in the chim- 

 nej^, but this soon ceased and was not again repeated. The night was 

 dark and still at the time, with rain falling gently and steadily." 



We must remember also that Wilson (1832) states that "the young 

 are fed at intervals during the greater part of the night," and Henry 

 C. Denslow writes to Mr. Bent of "the vivid memory" of an observa- 

 tion of the birds' nocturnal activities. He says that "the chimney 

 swift feeds its young in the middle of the night, going out and in 

 the chimney several times with the usual rumbling of wing beats 

 and the usual chirring sound of the young birds while being fed. I 

 chanced to sleep in a small room with a chimney, near Rochester, 

 N. Y., for several years, and so became familiar with this habit of 

 the bird." 



Frederic H. Kennard, in his notes, describes an interesting habit 

 that he observed at very close range at a nest containing young built 

 on the inner wall of a boathouse. He says: "She( ?) [a parent bird] 

 sat very close, moving her head only occasionally, panting with the 

 heat, and did not appear to mind me much until her mate flew in, 

 lit on the wall nearby, when she got off the nest and fluttered up and 

 down the wall beside or below the nest, snapping her wings together 

 (apparently behind her), a note of warning or anger, or something of 

 the sort, perhaps to scare me away or to show her displeasure. She 

 would raise her wings slowly until they stood out straight behind her 

 back, parallel and almost touching." And later he adds: "They do 

 not seem to snap their wings except when disturbed by me. There 

 is no snapping when they ordinarily leave their nests. Wlien they 

 do snap they slowly raise their wings until they are straight up from 

 their backs and then snap them a couple of times." 



At the same boathouse he "saw one of the swifts fly through a crack 

 in the door just after I had come out and closed it. He didn't slow 

 down at all, never missed a beat, but merely turned on one side and 

 went through, full speed." 



