ITS THE NATURAL HISTORY 



lasl week in April : and in some of our late frosty, harsli 

 springs, it has not been seen till the beginning of May. 

 This species usually arrives in pairs. 



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 carrjang 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 remembering that I have seen them squabbling 

 together at the entrance of their holes ; and the sparrows 

 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 cannot 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 ninth 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 educate their young under those thatched 

 roofs. We remember but one instance where they 

 breed out of buildings ; and that is in the sides 

 of a deep chalk-pit near the town of Odiham, in 

 this county, where we have seen many pairs entering the 



