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 re- 

 membering that I have seen them squabbling to- 

 gether at the entrance of their holes ; and the spar- 

 rows 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 Andalusia ; and that he has shot them 

 with such materials 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 can- 

 not 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 edu- 



32 



