186 KNOWING BIRDS THROUGH STORIES 



with green ; the throat is dull white, and there is a lighter 

 gray line over each eye. His very long wings lie back 

 so far as to give him the air of a real aristocrat. 



In the autumn, when the nights begin to get cool, the 

 swifts begin to show anxiety. They can be seen perching 

 on the roof or even sitting about on the ground. Finally 

 some morning we notice that they are gone. They do 

 not leave one at a time, but all that are nesting in any 

 particular farmstead go together. One afternoon in the 

 fall at Madison, Tennessee, I saw a large number of chim- 

 ney swifts flying about over the school premises. They 

 acted as tho perfectly at home, darting back and forth 

 catching insects. This was a great surprize to me, for 

 I have known only a few pairs to nest on this place. About 

 sundown I noticed that they were circling about a large 

 old chimney stack. Sometimes they would leave the region 

 of this chimney for several minutes, and then would come 

 back and circle about it again. Just as the sun was sink- 

 ing below the horizon one more daring than the rest 

 darted down the chimney, and in less time than it takes to 

 write it there was not a bird in sight. All of them passed 

 the night in this chimney, flew about over the place for 

 two or three hours in the morning, catching their break- 

 fasts, and then departed. It is not uncommon for mi- 

 grating chimney swifts to stop in this way and rest. In 

 the fall of 1921 hundreds of them roosted every night for 

 ten days or more in th6 tall chimneys of our heating plant, 

 and some birds remained all day. 



In the spring they do not appear to come back one at a 

 time, tho it is often reported that they do so. All the 

 swifts in our neighborhood usually came back together. I 

 remember one day we boys were out on the school grounds 



