The Northern Black Sivift 
Taken in Santa Cruz County Photo by the Author 
THE BLACK SWIFT NESTERS 
.A. G. VROOMAN, THE DISCOVERER, TO RIGHT 
of the East, miscalled “Swallow,” lays its treasures on a shallow bracket 
of twigs glued together by saliva, and placed against the wall inside a 
disused chimney. The Vaux Swift of the West makes a similar bracket 
of twigs, but retains for the most part the primitive custom of nesting 
inside some fire-hollowed tree or decayed stub. The White-throated 
Swift, which nests in crevices of cliffs, prepares an elaborate cushion of 
feathers and other soft substances, which it cements with saliva. It was 
fair, then, to suppose that the Black Swift, since it nested in cliffs, followed 
somewhat the same fashion as does its mountain-dwelling associate. 
But we did not know. 
Comes now Vrooman of Santa Cruz, naturalist, aged forty, and six¬ 
teen years steeped in the lore of local collecting haunts. On June 16th, 
1901, he is making his annual rounds of those beetling limestone cliffs, 
which with their indentations front the sea for thirty miles to west and 
north ot the famed resort on Monterey Bay. The country is a rather 
desolate one, for the unceasing winds have driven even the reluctant 
redwoods to take shelter in such canons as occasionally intersect the 
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