SWIFTS. 



The swift, like the sand-martin, is very defective 

 in architecture, making no crust or shell for its 

 nest, but forming it of dry grasses and feathers, 

 very rudely and inartificially put together. With 

 all my attention to these birds, I have never been 

 able once to discover one in the act of collecting 

 or carrying in materials : so that I have suspected 

 (since their nests are exactly the same) that 

 they sometimes usurp upon the house-sparrows, 

 and expel them, as sparrows do the house and 

 sand-martin well remembering that I have seen 

 them squabbling together at the entrance of their 

 holes, and the sparrows up in arms, and much 

 disconcerted at these intruders ; and yet I am 

 assured by a nice observer in such matters, that 

 they do collect feathers for their nests in Anda- 

 lusia, and that he has shot them with such mate- 

 rials in their mouths. 



Swifts, like sand-martins, carry on the business 

 of nidification quite in the dark, in crannies of 

 castles, and towers, and steeples, and upon the 

 tops of the walls of churches under the roof, 

 and therefore cannot be so narrowly watched as 

 those species that build more openly : but, from 

 what I could ever observe, they begin nesting 

 about the middle of May ; and I have remarked, 

 from eggs taken, that they have sat hard by . 

 the 9th of June. In general they haunt tall 

 buildings, churches, and steeples, and breed only 

 in such ; yet, in this village, some pairs frequent 

 the lowest and meanest cottages, and educate 

 their young under those thatched roofs. We 

 remember but one instance where they breed out 

 of buildings, and that is in the sides of a deep 

 chalk pit near the town of Odiham, in this county, 

 where we have seen many pairs entering the 



