222 The Chimney Swift 



The swifts feed their young during the greater part 

 of the night, and the noise made by their wings while 

 passing in and out of the chimney often resembles 

 the low rumbling of distant thunder. This is more 

 pronounced by the time the second brood is reared, 

 but it becomes unbearable only when, as sometimes 

 happens for a week or two, a few hundred swifts 

 take up a temporary residence in an old fashioned 

 chimney, before starting on their southern journey. 



I remember very distinctly flocks of this kind which 

 assembled at my father's old farmhouse and took 

 up their abode in the "parlor" chimney. The flocks 

 varied from a hundred to two or three times that 

 number, and the usual time of assembling was early in 

 September. Many a time at dusk I have watched the 

 birds flying in a large circle above the house, and then 

 all at once, even while I gazed, the mass would change 

 form those on the inner part gradually descending 

 and the circle narrowing until it resembled an in- 

 verted cone with rapidly moving sides, which swept 

 lower and lower, until the birds at the apex dropped 

 into the chimney, soon to be followed by the whole 

 flock. I saw something of the same thing a few sum- 

 mers ago in Princeton, New Jersey, although on a 

 much larger scale; chimney swifts varying in number 

 from twelve to fifteen hundred gathered each night, 



