The Vaux Swift 
Taken in Humboldt County 
avian missile goes hurtling across the sky without injury, or else minces 
along slowly with pretended difficulty. Now it waddles to and fro in 
strange zigzags, picking up a gnat at every angle, and again it ‘lights 
out’ with sudden access of energy and alternate wing strokes, intent on 
hawking in heaven's upper story. At favorite seasons the birds cross 
and recross each other’s paths in 
lawless mazes and fill the air with 
their strident creakings, while here 
and there couples and even trios sail 
about in great stiff curves with wings 
held aloft. It is the only opportunity 
afforded for personal attentions, and it 
is probable that the sexes have no fur¬ 
ther acquaintance except as they pass 
and repass in ministering to the young.” 
In nesting only, the Vaux Swift 
requires some distinction from modern 
pelagica , in that it clings pretty rigidly 
to the common ancestral habit of 
building in hollow trees. It is thus 
nearly confined in the breeding season 
to the vicinity of heavily forested 
areas, so that its study is difficult, 
and its appearances deceptively rare. 
In preparing for the nest, short 
twigs are seized and snapped 
off by the bird’s beak, in mid¬ 
flight, and these, after being 
rolled about in the copious sa¬ 
liva, are made fast to the inner 
Avail of the hollow tree, a neat 
and homogeneous bracket being 
thus formed. The bracket is 
so narroAV, hoAArever, that the 
eggs, even up to the number of 
half a dozen, are likely to be 
ranged in a single row, and 
these the sitting bird broods 
lengthwise. The first California 
nest, reported from the vicinity 
of Santa Cruz in 1874, was 
placed in the hollow of a dead 
Snapped by A. G. Vrooman 
THE VIEWER AND THE VIEWED 
YES, it’s MESILF; AND I COULD not SEE THE NEST, BECAUSE IT PROVED TO BE WITHIN TWENTY 
INCHES OF THE GROUND 
984 
