382 MICHIGAN BIRD LIFE, 
in many parts of the state the nest is still so placed, but owing to the habits 
of the bird, and its abundance everywhere, the fact escapes notice. Dr. 
W. H. Dunham, of Kalkaska, states that in Kalkaska county it is an 
abundant summer resident and nests in hollow trees and also in wells, 
placing the nest in the latter case from six to eight feet below the surface. 
The nest is made of small twigs broken by the bird from the tips of dead 
branches and fastened to each other and to the wall by the gummy saliva 
of the bird, which is especially modified for this purpose. The nest is often 
only a narrow platform, at first barely large enough for the five or six pure 
white, unspotted, elongated eggs, but later the platform is enlarged and 
the edge turned up so as to make it more or less saucer-shaped. At best, 
however, it is small and shallow and never contains any lining. The young 
are fed for a time in the nest, but usually after the second week they get out 
of the nest and cling to the wall nearit. According to very careful observa- 
tions made by Otto Widmann of St. Louis, Mo., the period of incubation 
is about eighteen days, and about thirty days more is required before the 
young are able to fly. Mr. Widmann does not believe that two broods 
are reared in Missouri, but thinks that the first nesting is very uncertain, 
depending largely on the weather, and that consequently some birds get 
their young on the wing while others are still incubating eggs. 
The food of this species consists entirely of winged insects, which are 
very largely two-winged flies, and presumably it is decidedly beneficial. 
It has been claimed that this bird, as well as some of the true swallows, 
carried bedbugs from house to house, but there seems to be nothing whatever 
to warrant such a, belief. 
In collecting twigs for the nest there is some difference of opinion as to 
the action of the bird. Some observers claim that the twig is seized with 
the feet and broken off by the weight of the bird, and that the twig is then 
carried away in the feet. On the other hand, most observers apparently 
think that the twig is seized in the beak and held there during the flight 
to the nest. More careful observations on this point are desirable. 
The spring arrival of the Swift is quite variable in different seasons, 
ranging in southern Michigan (Petersburg) from April 13, 1885 to May 
12, 1902, but the average date for that locality is not far from May Ist. 
At Bay City the arrivals average three or four days later, and at the Sault 
a week or ten days later. 
Sometimes on their first arrival in spring, but more commonly in late 
summer after most of the young are on the wing, the Swifts gather in large 
flocks toward nightfall, and after sweeping in great circles about some 
favorite chimney, they form a conical cloud, somewhat like a cyclone 
funnel, and drop rapidly from the apex into the chimney, where they roost 
for the night. Favorite resorts of this kind, usually abandoned factory 
chimneys or the unused chimneys of public buildings, are thus occupied 
year after year, but apparently these places are never used for nests. The 
earlier naturalists record the use of hollow trees in the same manner, and Mr. 
J. Foster, of Pompeii, Mich., tells us that several years ago, while coming 
down the Maple River, in Gratiot county, not far from Washington town- 
ship, just after daylight he saw an immense flock of Swifts come out of 
“a big hollow stub” close to the river. 
TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION. 
General color dark sooty brown, usually with a greenish tinge, blackening on top of head, 
on lores, and on outer wing-feathers, lightening to grayish brown on rump, upper tail- 
