DUSKY, GRAY, AND SLATE-COLORED BIRDS 
Chimney Swift 
( Chcetura pelagica ) Swift family 
Called also: CHIMNEY SWALLOW; AMERICAN SWIFT 
Length — 5 to 5.45 inches. About an inch shorter than the Eng- 
lish sparrow. Long wings make its length appear greater. 
Male and Female — Deep sooty gray ; throat of a trifle lighter gray. 
Wings extend an inch and a half beyond the even tail, which 
has sharply pointed and very elastic quills, that serve as props. 
Feet are muscular, and have exceedingly sharp claws. 
Range — Peculiar to North America east of the Rockies, and from 
Labrador to Panama. 
Migrations — April. September or October. Common summer 
resident. 
The chimney swift is, properly speaking, not a swallow at 
all, though chimney swallow is its more popular name. Rowing 
towards the roof of your house, as if it used first one wing, then 
the other, its flight, while swift and powerful, is stiff and mechan- 
ical, unlike the swallow’s, and its entire aspect suggests a bat. 
The nighthawk and whippoorwill are its relatives, and it resem- 
bles them not a little, especially in its nocturnal habits. 
So much fault has been found with the misleading names of 
many birds, it is pleasant to record the fact that the name of the 
chimney swift is everything it ought to be. No other birds can 
surpass and few can equal it in its powerful flight, sometimes 
covering a thousand miles in twenty-four hours, it is said, and 
never resting except in its roosting places (hollow trees or chim- 
neys of dwellings), where it does not perch, but rather clings to 
the sides with its sharp claws, partly supported by its sharper 
tail. Audubon tells of a certain plane tree in Kentucky where 
he counted over nine thousand of these swifts clinging to the 
hollow trunk. 
67 
