219 
A Nore on A Pecunttar NESTING SITE OF THE CHIMNEY 
Swift. 
GLENN CULBERTSON. 
As an illustration of the ability of birds to adapt themselves to new 
conditions, the chimney swift is a striking example. Driven from the 
hollow tree as a nesting site by the woodman’s axe and fires, the swift 
adapted itself to the broad open chimneys of the settlers’ cabins, and 
later to the narrow flues of a later day. The projecting spines of the tail 
feathers fortunately answered the same purpose in a soot-lined chimney 
that they had done in the soft decayed wodd of a hollow tree. 
During the past summer the writer's attention was called to a still 
greater change in the nesting site of a pair of swifts. Near the residence 
of Mr. James Storie, one and one-half miles north of Moorefield, Switzerland 
County, a pair of swifts, being excluded from the chimneys by wire net- 
ting, have nested for two seasons in an old-fashioned dug well walled with 
stone. 
The well is some twenty feet deep and three feet in diameter, and has 
over it a square curb about three feet high, one-half of which was per- 
manently left open. The nests were built in each case at a distance of 
some seven or eight feet below the level of the ground, and at approxi- 
mately the same distance above the water. The young were matured 
and brought forth in safety both seasons. 
