158 



THE OOLOGIST 



NOTES ON THE WHITE-THROATED 

 SWIFT 



We can truly say that this bird is 

 common to this part of our state in 

 all localities offering cliffs of a suit- 

 able height and character. On the 

 southeastern edge of Platte county 

 and extending into Goshen county 

 are the sandstone conglomerate 

 crowned cliffs of the western rim of 

 a stretch of country known as the 

 Goshen Hole. These cliffs will aver- 

 age about 100 feet in height and are 

 composed of a soft chalk rock 

 crowned on the top 10 to 20 feet 

 with a sandstone conglomerate. The 

 chalk portions being the softer fall 

 away often leaving the harder sand- 

 stone cropping over it for several 

 feet. The sandstone conglomerate is 

 full of small pockets and shelves 

 which offer excellent nesting sites 

 for the Prairie Falcon, Sparrow Hawk, 

 Hoc^i Wren and Say's Phoebe, while 

 the face of the chalk portions is often 

 almost obliterated by the nests of the 

 Cliff Swallow and in the cracks our 

 beautiful Swift finds a very safe and 

 almost impregnable nesting site. 



This 23rd of June three of us inter- 

 ested in trying to locate the nests of 

 this bird spent a most arduous and . 

 almost unprofitable day in trying to 

 secure nests. Time and again we 

 would descend the 100 foot cliffs by 

 means of ropes to find ourselves 

 swinging several feet from the face 

 of the cliff where the birds were 

 seen to enter a crack, or where we 

 could come close enough to the cliff 

 to find the crack to he several inches 

 wide and an unknown depth into the 

 face of the cliff and no nest in sight 

 or so far in the crack as to be un- 

 obtainable. Finally, after several at- 

 tempts, we found a nest in a crack 

 scarcely wide enough to admit an arm 

 and not out of reach of the hand- It 



contained a clutch of fresh eggs which 

 when first taken were spotted very 

 heavily with the stains of vermin. On 

 cleaning, the eggs showed a spotless 

 white, are eliptical in shape, and the 

 average measure is .87 inches by .55 

 inches. The shells are of a chalky 

 nature and are not glossy. One egg 

 in this set showed a peculiar defect 

 which showed in two small areas in 

 which the shell failed to cover the 

 skin. No Cliff Swallow's nest I ever 

 looked into was so nearly alive with 

 bugs as this nest and how the bird 

 remained on the nest was a mystery 

 to us. We captured the female by 

 cornering her as she did not leave 

 the nest until 1 put my hand in the 

 crevice. The nest itself seemed to 

 be supported in the crack by being 

 jammed into the narrow portion and 

 the old base was of a few buck brush 

 twigs lined with Grouse and chicken 

 feathers. Apparently the nest had 

 been used for about nine seasons as 

 after the first layer of sticks, feath- 

 ers, and filth, came seven successive 

 layers of feathers and filth, and over 

 the last of which there was a fresh 

 layer of feathers (Rhode Island Red 

 chicken) and the eggs. Two weeks 

 before this trip I had noticed seven 

 or eight of the birds flying about the 

 barn of a farmer living about one- 

 half mile from the edge of the cliffs 

 and presumably these feathers in 

 the nest came from his yard, as he 

 is the only farmer in the near neigh- 

 borhood owning Rhode Island Red 

 chickens. It was impossible to tell 

 if the original twigs of buck brush 

 had been cemented together as in the 

 case of the nest of the Chimney 

 Swift owing to the fact of decay. This 

 nest was 60 feet from the bottom of 

 the cliff and 50 feet from the top. We 

 observed unobtainable nests in crev- 

 ices from 25 feet from the bottom of 

 cliffs to 6 feet of top, but no nesting 

 sites seemed chosen on cliffs of less 



