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I have had better opportunities of observing these birds than 
most people, and have made nearly a lifelong study of them, and 
what I am telling you is mostly from my own observation. Most of 
the life of the Swifts is spent in the air. They do everything in 
the air except nest, lay eggs, incubate, and feed the young. They 
eat, drink, gather materials for their nests, and go to roost in 
the air. They settle nowhere except at' their own nests. They 
never settle on the ground, though sometimes they fall down 
when they clutch each other in play. They can rise from the 
ground if there is head room and they are not disabled. I have 
released dozens by placing them on the lawn, and with a couple 
of flips they were oft. But they could not rise in a small court¬ 
yard with high walls, or when they had fallen into long wet 
grass and become soaked. 
They are, I think, the last of the summer birds to come and 
the first to go. They used to arrive in Herefordshire in the first 
week in May, most often on the 5th, and they left generally about 
the 11th of August. The white eggs, of which there are two 
or sometimes three, are laid at the beginning of June, and take 
nineteen to twenty-one days to hatch, nearly as long as a chicken. 
The young are naked and unsightly things,, and are blind for 
about nine days after leaving the shell. They take six weeks to 
grow up, and never leave the nest until they go out and straight 
off to Africa. They do not re-enter the nest. They are then fully 
fledged, and their wings nearly as long as those of their parents. 
Their quill feathers are edged with a lighter colour, and they 
are beautiful, glossy birds. The Swifts come to Europe only 
to breed, the conditions in Africa being, or having been, unfavour¬ 
able for breeding. They come back to the same nest year after 
year, they pair for life, as do all birds which return to the same 
nest, they have only one brood, and they leave as soon as the 
young are ready to go. . The puzzle—why do these birds leave 
in glorious weather when there is plenty of food—is explained 
when we realise that they come only to breed. As soon as that 
business is over they depart, and the weather and the flies have 
nothing to do with it. In fact, so eager are they to go at the 
usual time that I am assured by other observers that thev will 
sometimes leave their young ones to perish. I have not seen this 
myself, and I do net think it often occurs.* 
The Swift lives on flies and other winged insects, which it 
catches in the air. v It will not take food otherwise, it will not 
pick a fly off a church window, even though it is starving. It 
does not know how to. It drinks while flying over water bv 
slowing, down, holding its wings well up and dipping its beak in 
- - or an instant. It gathers for its nest blades of grass, petals of 
flowers, anything it can find floating in the wind. These it binds 
together with its glutinous saliva, and sometimes makes a neat 
* Members will remember the late stay of many swifts in 1912, when the 
broods were late, and the parent birds remained to do their duty. 
