i82 Birds Every Child Should Know 



small feet, weak from disuse, could scarcely 

 hold them on a perch. 



One day last Jtdy I picked up on the ground 

 a young swift I thought had dropped from ex- 

 haustion in its first flight. As swifts had been 

 nesting in one of the chimneys, I carried the 

 young bird in my hand into the house, up 

 stairs, out through an attic window onto the 

 roof, climbed along the ridgepole in terror for 

 my life, clinging by only one free hand to the 

 peak of the roof, and at last reached the swift's 

 chimney. Laying the sooty youngster on the 

 stone chimney-cap I had crawled cautiously 

 backward only a few feet, when lo! my charge 

 suddenly bounded off into the air like a veteran 

 to join a flock of companions playing cross -tag. 

 As it wheeled and darted above the house, 

 evidently quite as much at ease in the air as 

 any of the merry, twittering company, don't 

 you believe it started the laugh on me? But 

 what had brought so able a young flyer to 

 earth? My wounded vanity tempts me to be- 

 lieve that it had really dropped from fatigue 

 and, once on the ground, was unable to rise 

 again, whereas it was comparatively easy to 

 latmch itself from the chimney-top. 



With mouths agape from ear to ear, the 

 swifts draw in an insect dinner piecemeal, as 

 they course through the air, just as the whip- 

 poor-will, nighthawk and swallows do. For- 



