i82 Birds Every Child Should Know 
small feet, weak from disuse, could scarcely 
hold them on a perch. 
One day last July I picked up on the ground 
a young swift I thought had dropped from ex- 
haustion in its first flight. As swifts had been 
nesting in one of the chimneys, I carried the 
young bird in my hand into the house, up 
stairs, out through an attic window onto the 
roof, climbed along the ridgepole in terror for 
my life, clinging by only one free hand to the 
peak of the roof, and at last reached the sv/ift’s 
chimney. Laying the sooty youngster on the 
stone chimney-cap I had crawled cautiously 
backward only a few feet, when lo ! my charge 
suddenly bounded off into the air like a veteran 
to join a flock of companions playing cross-tag. 
As it wheeled and darted above the house, 
evidently quite as much at ease in the air as 
any of the merry, twittering company, don’t 
you believe it started the laugh on me? But 
what had brought so able a young flyer to 
earth? My wounded vanity tempts me to be- 
lieve that it had really dropped from fatigue 
and, once on the ground, was unable to rise 
again, whereas it was comparatively easy to 
launch itself from the chimney-top. 
With mouths agape from ear to ear, the 
swifts draw in an insect dinner piecemeal, as 
they course through the air, just as the whip- 
poor-will, nighthawk and swallows do. For- 
