NIGHT-JARS, SWIFTS, AND HUMMING-BIRDS 89 
Photo by J. T. Newmari] \ Berkhamsted 
SWIFT 
A common British bird during the summer months 
The swift has great buoyancy of spirits, as is manifested by the wild, exuberant bursts of 
screaming to which it gives voice as it rushes in small parties down the lanes or along the 
less-frequented thoroughfares of towns as morning breaks or evening falls, and occasionally 
throughout the day. The greater part of its life is spent upon the wing (indeed, it appears 
to rest only when incubating or sleeping), and of all the smaller birds it is the most graceful 
in flight, turning and twisting in fairy mazes high in the heavens for hours at a time. 
The swift chooses for its nesting-place the eaves of houses and holes in church towers, and 
occasionally a crevice in the face of a quarry. The nest is formed of bits of straw, dry grass, 
and a few feathers, glued together by a secretion of the salivary glands into a compact crust; 
in this the bird deposits from two to four white eggs. The young, which are hatched naked 
and blind, never develop down-feathers, but soon become more or less imperfectly clothed in 
a mass of tiny spines, representing the budding feathers; these give the bird somewhat the 
appearance of a young hedgehog. 
In adaptation to its remarkable powers of flight, the wing has undergone considerable 
modification in form, so that it differs from that of all other birds. On the other hand, 
the legs, being so little required, have diminished considerably, and are remarkable for their 
smallness — a fact which hampers the bird considerably, should it happen to alight on level 
ground, for, owing to the great length of the wings, it can arise only with considerable difficulty. 
Nearly allied to the common swift is Salvin’s Swift, remarkable on account of its nest, 
which has been described by Dr. Sharpe as the most wonderful in the world. About 2 feet 
long and 6 inches in diameter, it looks rather like the sleeve of an old coat than a nest. 
It is made entirely of the downy seeds of plants, which, floating through the air after the 
fashion of such seeds, are caught by the birds when on the wing, and, partly felted and 
partly glued by the salivary secretion, are woven slowly into the characteristic woolly domicile. 
The site and manner of fixation of the nest are scarcely less wonderful, for it is suspended 
from the flat surface of some projecting piece of rock on the face of a cliff, and is thus 
almost inaccessible; yet, as if to make assurance doubly sure, two entrances are made, one at 
