464 
SWIFTS. 
tree ; it is wholly destitute of lining. They have commonly 
two broods in the season. So assiduous are the parents that 
they feed the young through the greater part of the night ; 
their habits, however, are nearly nocturnal, as they fly abroad 
most at and before sunrise, and in the twilight of evening. 
The noise which they make while passing up and down the 
chimney resembles almost the rumbling of distant thunder. 
When the nests get loosened by rains so as to fall down, the 
young, though blind, find means to escape, by creeping up and 
clinging to the sides of the chimney walls ; in this situation 
they continue to be fed for a week or more. Soon tired of 
their hard cradle, they generally leave it long before they are 
capable of flying. 
On their first arrival, and for a considerable time after, the 
males, particularly, associate to roost in a general resort. This 
situation, in the remote and unsettled parts of the country, is 
usually a large hollow tree, open at top. These well-known 
Swallow trees are ignorantly supposed to be the winter quar- 
ters of the species, where, in heaps, they doze away the cold 
season in a state of torpidity i but no proof of the fact is ever 
adduced. The length of time such trees have been resorted 
to by particular flocks may be conceived, perhaps, by the 
account of a hollow tree of this kind described by the Rev. Dr. 
Harris in his Journal. The Platanus alluded to, grew in the 
upper part of Waterford, in Ohio, two miles from the Muskin- 
gum, and its hollow trunk, now fallen, of the diameter of 5 
feet, and for nearly 15 feet upwards, contained an entire mass 
of decayed Swallow feathers, mixed with browmish dust and 
the exuvi^ of insects. In inland towns these birds have been 
known to make their general roost in the chimney of the 
court-house. Before descending, they fly in large flocks, mak- 
ing many ample and circuitous sweeps in the air ; and as the 
point of the vortex falls, individuals drop into the chimney 
by degrees, until the whole have descended, which generally 
takes place in the dusk of the evening. They all, however, 
disappear about the first week in August. Like the rest of the 
tribe, the Chimney Swift flies very quick, and with but slight 
