Extracts from Diary of Otto Widmann 51 



glands developed to secrete a mucus which serves to glue 

 together the material to build the nest. Species of the 

 Old World CoUocalia make the e<liblc bird's nests, so 

 much sought after in China and Japan. There are many 

 interesting peculiarities connected with the niditieation 

 of Swifts. A Panyptila, a cousin of our White-throated 

 Swift, living in Guatemala, attaches a tube a foot or more 

 in length to the underside of an overhanging rock, con- 

 structed of the pappus of plants, caught flying in the air. 

 Entrance is from below and the eggs are laid on a shelf 

 near the top. A near relative of our Swift in Brazil 

 makes a similar tube nest out of seeds of a certain plant, 

 suspends it to a horizontal branch and covers the outside 

 with feathers of various colors. As there is no shelf to 

 receive the eggs, it is believed that these are cemented 

 against the sides of the tube and brooded on by the bird 

 while in an upright position. A Dendrochelidon, a Swift 

 of Java, builds, on a horizontal branch, a narrow plat- 

 form of feathers and moss, cemented together, and lays 

 in it a single egg. The nest is so small that the bird sits 

 on the branch and covers the egg with the end of her 

 belly. 



AVhen this country was first settled Swifts were breed- 

 ing and roosting in hollow trunks of forest trees, but the 

 change from trees to chimneys must have been early, for 

 the first writers on birds connect them with their habit 

 of using chimneys for nesting and roosting. At present 

 the change is nearly complete, as comparatively few cases 

 become known where hollow trees are used for nesting. 

 In Missouri it is mainly the water tupelo, Nyssa unifiora, 

 which may still offer them retreats, because apparently 

 healthy trees are entirely hollow, resembling flues and 

 affording entrance by broken-off branches. We found a 

 nest with eggs in such a tupelo in the St. Francis River 

 in Dunklin Co., fastened to the wall of the shaft only two 

 feet above the water in which the tree was standing. As' 

 the opening was fifteen feet from the water, the nest was 



