The swallows are not urban birds. The gas, 

 the smoke, the shrieking ventilators, and the 

 ceaseless sullen roar of the city are hardly to 

 their liking. Perhaps the flies and gnats which 

 they feed upon cannot live in the air above the 

 roofs. The swallows want a sleepy old town 

 with big thunderful chimneys, where there are 

 wide fields and a patch of quiet water. 



Much more numerous than the swallows are 

 the night-hawks. My roof, in fact, is the best 

 place I have ever found to study their feeding 

 habits. These that flit through my smoky dusk 

 may not make city nests, though the finding of 

 such nests would not surprise me. Of course a 

 night-hawk's nest, here or anywhere else, would 

 surprise me ; for like her cousin, the whippoor- 

 will, she never builds a nest, but stops in the 

 grass, the gravel, the leaves, or on a bare rock, 

 deposits her eggs without even scratching aside 

 the sticks and stones that may share the bed, 

 and in three days is brooding them — brooding 

 the stones too. 



It is likely that some of my hawks nest on 

 the buildings in the neighborhood. Night- 

 hawks' eggs have occasionally been found 



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