220 MEMOIRS OF THE NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 



shrouded in gloom, they skim close to the earth over fields and meadows and 

 along country roads and lanes. 



Within my personal recollection the Nighthawk has never bred numerously 

 or generally in the Cambridge Region and I know of but two places where it 

 has been found recently in summer, viz., at Rock Meadow, Belmont, and near 

 Great Meadow, East Lexington. Of late years, however, it has established the 

 habit of nesting in small numbers on the flat, gravelled roofs of buildings in the 

 Back Bay District of Boston, and birds from this locality sometimes extend 

 their wanderings in search of food to Cambridge, where I occasionally see them 

 at evening flying over our garden. 



115. Chaetura pelagica (Linn.). 

 Chimney Swift. Chimney Swallow. 



Abundant summer resident. 



SEASONAL OCCURRENCE. 



April 18, 1896, seen, Cambridge Region, W. Faxon. 



April 25 — September 20. 

 September 23, 1898, fifteen seen, East Lexington, W. Faxon. 



NESTING DATES. 



June 10 — 30. 



One of the pleasantest recollections of my youth is that of Chimney 

 Swifts careering in swarms, with joyous, twittering cries, over and around our 

 house. Up to 1875 or a little later they continued to breed abundantly in our 

 immediate neighborhood, and very commonly in many other parts of Cambridge. 

 Although they have not yet deserted this city, we no longer see them here 

 in any numbers, at least in early summer. The change has progressed grad- 

 ually, but very steadily. In my opinion it has been due not so much to the 

 spread and increase of the human population, as to the removal or alteration 

 of so many of the older houses, and the accompanying substitution of narrow, 

 smoothly lined chimney flues for those of more ample and primitive type, 

 with inner surfaces sufificiently rough or irregular to furnish suitable points 

 of attachment for the curious nests of the Chimney Swifts. In the farm- 

 ing country to the westward of Cambridge, as well as about the village cen- 

 ters of Arlington, Belmont and Watertown, where chimneys of ancient pattern 



