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A Note on a Peculiar Nesting Site of the Chimney 



Swift. 



Glenn Culbertson. 



As an illustration of the ability of birds to adapt themselves to new 

 conditions, the chimney swift is a striking example. Driven from the 

 hollow tree as a nesting site by the woodman's axe and fires, the swift 

 adapted itself to the broad open chimneys of the settlers' cabins, and 

 later to the narrow flues of a later day. The projecting spines of the tail 

 feathers fortunately answered the same purpose in a soot-lined chimney 

 that they had done in the soft decayed wodd of a hollow tree. 



During the past summer the writer's attention was called to a still 

 greater change in the nesting site of a pair of swifts. Near the residence 

 of Mr. James Storie, one and one-half miles north of Moorefield, Switzerland 

 County, a pair of swifts, being excluded from the chimneys by wire net- 

 ting, have nested for two seasons in an old-fashioned dug well walled with 

 stone. 



The well is some twenty feet deep and three feet in diameter, and has 

 over it a square curb about three feet high, one-half of which was per- 

 manently left open. The nests were built in each case at a distance of 

 some seven or eight feet below the level of the ground, and at approxi- 

 mately the same distance above the water. The young were matured 

 and brought forth in safety both seasons. 



