THE CHIMNEY SWIFT 
By T. GILBERT PEARSON 
The National Association of Audubon Societies 
Educational Leaflet No. 49 
One late summer’s evening, after the sun went down, there were ob- 
served flying above the tree-tops of a North Carolina village, a large 
number of black objects. Some one said they were bats, while others 
pronounced them Swallows, but they were neither. The swarm of dusky 
forms swinging rapidly about the sky was a flock of Chimney Swifts. 
They seemed to be more numerous in the neighborhood of a large college 
building. Presently they began circling in one rushing, revolving, 
twittering mass of bird-life. One side of this living wheel passed directly 
over the large chimney which led downward to the furnace in the 
basement. 
Suddenly, during those last moments of twilight before the darkness 
falls, one of the Swifts threw up its wings and dropped 
out of sight in the chimney. Soon another did the ^Bedroom y 
same, then another and another. They went in by 
pairs, by fours, almost by dozens. The wheel continued to revolve while 
a stream of birds, as if thrown off by a kind of centrifugal force, went 
pouring down into the gaping mouth of darkness. 
We stood and counted as best as we could the numbers in this cata- 
ract of feathered life. Not for one moment was the scene changed until 
the play was at an end. “One thousand,” I said. “One thousand and 
twenty-five,” answered the gentleman with me, who had probably counted 
more correctly. Five or six birds that had hesitated to the last mo- 
ment to take the plunge, and now possibly missed the moral support of 
the large company, gave up the idea of stopping there that night and, 
turning, flew away in the falling darkness. Night closed in upon the 
great chimney with its sooty walls lined with an army of clinging, 
drowsy Swifts ; for this was the huge bedroom of these little picaninnies 
of the air. 
It was now seventeen minutes past seven o’clock. Less than twenty 
minutes had been required for the flock to enter. 
Since early morning each bird had been upon the 
wing, roaming the endless pathways of the air in lg t 
quest of insect-food. It is possible that not once during the day had one 
paused to rest, as the Swift trusts the weight of its body to its weak 
feet, except in places where, as in the hollow breast of a great tree, or 
down the yawning throat of a chimney, it can cling to the perpendicular 
wall, braced from below by its tail, each feather of which ends in a stiff, 
needle-like continuation of the shaft. 
193 
