214 NATURAL HISTORY 
all my attention to these birds, | have never been 
able once to discover one in the act of collecting 
or carrying in materials; so that I have suspected 
(since their nests are exactly the same) that they 
sometimes usurp upon the house-sparrows, and ex- 
pel them, as sparrows do the house and sand mar- 
tin; well remembering that I have seen them 
squabbling together at the entrance of their holes, 
and the sparrows up in arms, and much discon- 
certed at these intruders ; and yet [ am assured by 
a nice observer in such matters, that they do col- 
lect feathers for their nests in Andalusia, and thax 
he has shot them with such materials in thei, 
mouths. 
Swifts, like sand-martins, carry on the business 
of nidification quite in the dark, in crannies of cas- 
tles, and towers, and steeples, and upon the tops of 
the walls of churches under the roof, and therefore 
cannot be so narrowly watched as those species 
that build more openly; but, from what I could 
ever observe, they begin nesting about the middle 
of May; and I have remarked, from eggs taken, 
that they have set hard by the 9th of June. In 
general they haunt tall buildings, churches, and 
steeples, and build only in such; yet in this village 
some pairs frequent the lowest and meanest cot- 
tages, and educate their young under those thatched 
roofs. We remember but one instance where they 
placed their rests out of buildings, and that is in 
the sides of a deep chalk-pit near the town of Odi- 
ham, in this county, where we have seen many 
pairs enteriug the crevices, and skimming and 
squeaking round the precipices. 
As the swift eats, drinks, and oollegks materials 
