78 



The Chimney Swift. 



far the greater number of the birds that are 

 seen in the East and Middle West have taken 

 advantage of chimneys, which are not used 

 in summer, and build and roost in them. 

 From this habit comes the common name 

 Chimney "Swallow." 



And yet the ornithologist will tell you 

 that these little birds are not swallows at 

 all, although they look so much like them. 

 They are classed by most of these scien- 

 tific gentlemen as belonging to the order 

 Picarics. This group of birds contains a 

 great many different and widely diverse 

 kinds, which are put together in one order 

 more because they are unlike any other 

 birds than because they seem to have rela- 

 tionships with each other. This order con- 

 tains the swifts, the goatsuckers — of which 

 our night hawk and whippoorwill are ex- 

 amples — the humming-birds, the cuckoos 

 and their relatives, and the woodpeckers, 

 so that you can easily see that there are 

 a great many different sorts of birds in it. 

 But whatever the Chimney "Swallows" 

 really are, it is enough for our purpose now 

 that they seem like swallows, and are called 

 so. 



Soon after they get here in spring they 

 begin to make arrangements for their house- 

 keeping. After they have chosen their 

 mates, the next thing is to select a place for 

 their nests. If they are a pair of old birds, 

 this does not take them long, for they will 

 be likely to return to the chimney which 

 was occupied by one or both of them the 

 year before. The nest is a curious structure 

 and is built in a curious way. It is made 

 of small dry twigs, which are at first glued 

 to the side of the chimney, by means of a 

 gummy saliva, which the birds secrete, and 

 then are crossed on and glued to each other 

 so as to form a platform, which is slightly 

 hollow on top, so that there is no danger of 

 the eggs rolling off from it. These are 

 from four to six in number and are pure 

 white in color. 



Sometimes, either because the weight of 



the young birds is too great for it to sup- 

 port, or because the glue which holds the 

 sticks to the side of the chimney has been 

 weakened by rain falling on it, the nest 

 breaks away from its position and drops 

 down to the bottom of the chimney. If 

 this occurs when the nestlings are very 

 young, they must all perish, but if they are 

 partially fledged they stick their sharp little 

 claws in the side of the chimney wall, and 

 clamber up again to the top, where they 

 may sometimes be seen taking food from 

 the parent birds. 



You may wonder where the Chimney 

 Swifts get the little sticks with which they 

 build their nests, if they never alight on the 

 ground nor on the trees. Well, they break 

 them off the trees as they are flying by, and 

 perhaps some day this spring, if you watch 

 the Swifts, you may see them do it. Thev 

 fly by some tree which has tiny dead twigs 

 on it, and as they go past these they reach 

 out their little feet, grasp a twig, and by 

 their weight break it away, and carry it off 

 with them. You can see from this what 

 small twigs they must use. They are such 

 little birds that they could not break off 

 anything that was ver}'^ strong. 



It will have been noticed that the Chim- 

 ney Swift is in many ways rather a curious 

 bird. It is quite unlike most of our birds 

 in its structure, is peculiar in its nesting 

 habits not only in the way in which it gathers 

 the materials for its dwelling, but also 

 in the means it employs to fasten these ma- 

 terials together and to the surface which 

 supports them. There is perhaps nothing, 

 however, in which this bird is more peculiar 

 than in its roosting habits. The places 

 which it chooses for passing the night 

 are often large enough to afford room for 

 thousands of birds, and are usually either 

 hollow trees or large disused chimneys. 

 During a short period just previous to their 

 migration southward these birds resort to 

 such chosen places in enormous numbers. 



An admirable description of one of these 



