THE SWIFT :i:,7 



possession of desirable sites, the first to take possession generally 

 maintaining his position. 



Having seemed a nesting-hole, with or without a fight, the 

 swift has next to face the problem of obtaining material to build its 

 nest, its strong objection to alighting on the ground creating a 

 difficulty not easy to overcome. It simplifies the problem by dis- 

 pensing with all but the lining: ft neither imitates the mud structure 

 of the swallows, nor the heuped-up straw and grass foundations of the 

 starlings and sparrows. The lining consists of a variety of material 

 straw, grass, feathers, lichens, moss, and the like found in >/''". 

 collected by the bird on the wing, or sometimes, it is said, stolen from 

 the nests of its neighbours. I can find no record that it has been seen 

 collecting material on the ground, though no doubt, as Bailly notes, it 

 picks up, when in flight, from the ground or elsewhere anything suit- 

 able, just as it picks food off the surface of water or from blades of 

 -rax-. The lining may be so slight as to form a mere ring round the 

 eggs, which are laid on the bare stone. 2 Bailly, again, states that 

 pair- -.omrtimt"* tail to Mud .inv material, and that "tlii- appear- to 

 occur not infrequently in towns, as any one may ascertain by visiting a 

 number of swift nests in May," and that, in such cases, the eggs are 

 placed on the grit lying in the hole, this being raked together in the 

 form of a nest, and made into a kind of cement by the addition of the 

 salivary secretions of the bird. 3 The same secretion is used to glue 

 together the ordinary materials used. The nest is saucer-shaped, and 

 not always deep enough to prevent an egg rolling out, if the owner 

 chances to quit it in a hurry. 



The habit of using salivary secretions as nest-cement is general 

 among swifts. The American chimney-swift glues together twigs into 

 a semi-circular nest which it attaches to the inside of chimneys. 

 Another species (Mctcropteryz coronato) builds in the same way a half 

 saucer of bark and feathers, which is glued to a branch. Salvins' swift 



1 Uailly, Ornitholoffie de la Satoie, i. 288. ' Zoologist, 1001. 381 (A. Kllinon). 



1 Ornitholoyif tie la Saroit, loc. cit. 



