464 SWIFTS. 



tree ; it is wholly destitute of lining. They have commonly 

 two broods in the season. So assiduous are the parents that 

 they feed the young through the greater part of the night ; 

 their habits, however, are nearly nocturnal, as they fly abroad 

 most at and before sunrise, and in the twilight of evening. 

 The noise which they make while passing up and down the 

 chimney resembles almost the rumbling of distant thunder. 

 When the nests get loosened by rains so as to fall down, the 

 young, though blind, find means to escape, by creeping up and 

 clinging to the sides of the chimney walls; in this situation 

 they continue to be fed for a week or more. Soon tired of 

 their hard cradle, they generally leave it long before they are 

 capable of flying. 



On their first arrival, and for a considerable time after, the 

 males, particularly, associate to roost in a general resort. This 

 situation, in the remote and unsettled parts of the country, is 

 usually a large hoflow tree, open at top. These well-known 

 SioaUoisj trees are ignorantly supposed to be the winter quar- 

 ters of the species, where, in heaps, they doze away the cold 

 season in a state of torpidity ; but no proof of the fact is ever 

 adduced. The length of time such trees have been resorted 

 to by particular flocks may be conceived, perhaps, by the 

 account of a hollow tree of this kind described by the Rev. Dr. 

 Harris in his Journal. The Platanus alluded to, grew in the 

 upper part of Waterford, in Ohio, two miles from the Muskin- 

 gum, and its hollow trunk, now fallen, of the diameter of 5^ 

 feet, and for nearly 15 feet upwards, contained an entire mass 

 of decayed Swallow feathers, mixed with brownish dust and 

 the exuviae of insects. In inland towns these birds have been 

 known to make their general roost in the chimney of the 

 court-house. Before descending, they fly in large flocks, mak- 

 ing many ample and circuitous sweeps in the air ; and as the 

 point of the vortex falls, individuals drop into the chimney 

 by degrees, until the whole have descended, which generally 

 takes place in the dusk of the evening. They all, however, 

 disappear about the first week in August. Like the rest of the 

 tribe, the Chimney Swift flies very quick, and with but slight 



