DELAWARE VALLEY ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 7 



suddenly arresting themselves and reversing by using the tail 

 as brake, just at the mouth of the chimney; thence they would 

 drop to a point below the young, wings above body and body 

 parallel to the earth, until they wished to arrest themselves, 

 when the wings would beat violently, producing that drumming 

 sound so distinctive of the bird's return to the chimney. 



The rapidity of the beating of the wings obscured the chang- 

 ing of the position of the Swift's body from that of parallel to 

 the earth to that of parallel to the chimney walls, but it seemed 

 to me that as the birds arrested their flight they tipped down 

 the lower parts of their liodies so that their feet could grasp the 

 wall as they hovered close to it. They never lighted descend- 

 ing but always ascending, after the downward plunge had been 

 arrested. They would continue to beat their wings after they 

 had grasjied the wall with their feet, and sometimes they would 

 flutter up, keeping themselves off the wall by the feet, like a 

 sailor coming up the side of a ship on a rope. At times, of 

 course, they were assisted in mounting higher by feet as well as 

 wings and sometimes they climbed by their feet alone. Both 

 old and young used their tails to help support themselves, press- 

 ing the spines firmly against the chinmey wall. 



Other entrances to the chimney were accomplished this way. 



The birds would come speeding home at a level, only a few 

 feet above that of the chimney-top, suddenly stop themselves 

 by expanding their tails, and, with wings held rigid above 

 bodies and pointed slightly outward so as to buoy themselves 

 in their descent, drop into the chimney mouth, to repeat the 

 same tactics in landing on the wall of the chimney as when they 

 dove in from a height of twenty feet or more. 



The young birds had not yet learned to dive. They always 

 came in this latter manner I have described, except that they 

 fell from a point about ten feet from the chimney-top. Often 

 they missed entirely and often when they were directly above 

 the chimney mouth they lost courage and circled away to try 

 again. 



Our chimney bends south westward about four feet from the 

 top, but within fourteen inches regains the perpendicular. This 

 bend results in an overhang of six inches on the northeast wall 



