THE BIRD STUDY BOOK 



birds, but I think no success in this Hne ever pleased 

 me quite so much as the discovery of two pairs of 

 Purple Martins making their nests one day in May, 

 down on the edge of the Everglade country in south 

 Florida. There were no bird boxes or gourds for 

 at least twenty or thirty miles around, so the birds 

 had appropriated some old Flicker nesting cavities 

 in dead trees, that is, one pair of the birds had ap- 

 propriated a disused hole, and the second pair was 

 busy trying to carry nesting material into a Flicker's 

 nest from which the young birds had not yet de- 

 parted. Here then were Martins preparing to carry 

 on their domestic duties just as they did back in the 

 old primeval days. 



The discussion of this subject could not well be 

 closed without mentioning the Chimney Swift that 

 now almost universally glues to the inner side of a 

 chimney, or more rarely the inner wall of some build- 

 ing, the few little twigs that constitute its nest. It is 

 only in the remotest parts of the country that these 

 birds still resort to hollow trees for nesting purposes. 

 [138] 



