4 T H'E’ A.UDU BON BIUeiiG hee 
the ledges around museums and libraries. Occasionally a colony of domestic 
pigeons will be found nesting away from the cities on rock cliffs and thus 
have returned completely to their former haunts. The writer was startled 
to find such a colony in the foothills of the Colorado Rockies nesting by 
cliff swallows. 
The European starlings which greet the visitor to the Art Institute and 
Chicago Natural History Museum have sought the companionship of man 
from early times. According to Virginia Eifert! the tribe of starlings 
began in the pleasant valleys of the Himalayas. They left the rock cliffs 
for pagodas provided them by Brahmans. Later the family spread through 
the Orient to Europe, and in 1890 eighty birds were brought to New York 
City. No wonder the starling enjoys the domes, towers and window ledges 
of our tall buildings. It was perhaps to be expected that the bird which 
preys on pigeons and starlings would leave his native haunts to follow them 
Intoosner city, 
It is hoped that the duck hawk will be preserved in our cities and valued 
fcr the superb bird that he is. He plucks his prey in wild flight from the 
air and is the embodiment of lonely freedom. His presence among our tall 
buildings gives zest to otherwise drab surroundings. Pigeons and sparrows 
grow fat and numerous on easy living and we need not begrudge him an 
cecasional one. He who shoots a duck hawk is callous to one of nature’s 
most superb products. The discovery of the first duck hawk’s nest on Chi- 
cago’s ledges will be a great event, for it will mark a new life community 
in the heart of our city. 
On warm summer evenings the harsh, buzzy calls of bull-bats are heard 
in the dark above the city streets. These are the nighthawks which skim 
and dip over the buildings through the night, scooping insects into their 
cavernous mouths. They nest on the flat roofs of apartments and office 
buildings which resemble the rocky pastures their ancestors chose. Florence 
Page Jaques describes how a pair raised their family on the roof of the 
Minnesota Museum of Natural History.2 She and the staff were engrossed 
in watching the two nestlings fed and cared for on the coarse gravel without 
benefit of nest. Expert flyers, the adults are awkward on the roof-top, 
their bodies swaying from side to side as they walk on their weak feet. 
Nighthawks are not hawks at all but goatsuckers, related to the whip- 
poor-will, and, stranger still, to the hummingbird. 
Everyone is familiar with the chimney swift, that tireless flyer in sooty 
black, a cigar body with crescent wings, darting and chattering across the 
sky. The chimney swift, as its name implies, has so completely adopted 
our chimneys for nesting and roosting that if we by chance find a colony 
in a rocky cave it seems strange. 
On the shore front of Lake Michigan are ring-billed and herring gulls 
who like the city so well that some stay all year round. They live on the 
Bird of Heaven” by Virginia Eifert, The Living Museum, Illinois State Museum, 
February, 1947. 
°“Nighthawks Make Pleasant Neighbors” — Florence Page Jaques — Audubon Magazine, 
November-December, 1946, page 330. 
