474 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



Avere un.successful in raising their broods "did not return 

 to breed ; " but lie found one brood which had weathered 

 the storm })eriod. Mr. Loring could find only two or three 

 of these birds about Pittsfield last summer, and none breed- 

 ing. Apparently many of these birds either perished or left 

 the State without breeding. 



This in(j[uiry has brought to light, again, the fact that 

 swifts nest or at least roost in larw colonies. Years ago 

 such a colony existed in Millbury, Mass. The birds came 

 at nightfall in a great swarm, settling in a large hollow tree, 

 where they passed the night. Three instances where these 

 birds swarm into chimneys are mentioned by correspondents. 



Where chimney swifts were most numerous at the time of 

 the storm they, apparently, suffered most. Mr. Kohlrausch 

 says that a colony of about two hundred swifts that inhabited 

 a disused chimney in North Billerica succumbed ; also that a 

 large colony that lived in a great chinmey or stack at the 

 Talbot Mills was destroyed. He states that three wheel- 

 barrow loads of dead birds were removed from the base of 

 the stack after the storm. Mr. Bailey corroborates this 

 statement, and says that the dead birds were removed on 

 June 21, thus fixing the date as that of the heaviest rainfall. 

 He says that the swifts wore nearly exterminated in that 

 vicinity. All through that region these birds w^ere com- 

 parativeW scarce after the storm. He believes that the 

 swifts lost two-thirds of their number in a section between 

 Boston and the New PIam})shire line and along the Concord 

 and Merrimack rivers. At the time of this storm and for a 

 week afterwards he had a good 0})portunity to observe its 

 effects in that region. 



Reports from Norfolk, Barnstable and Bristol counties 

 tell of dead swifts dropping down the chimneys into fire- 

 places, being picked up on lawns, or disappearing during 

 the storm. 



Mr. Porter took out twenty-four dead birds from a chim- 

 ney in Stoughton. Mr. Isaac Alger ^vrites that, as far as 

 he has observed, the chimney swifts are all dead in Attle- 

 borough. Mr. Ingalls reports that he saw no swifts on the 

 way from East Templeton to Si)ringfield on August 8 until 



