The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-11-13
WAYS OF CHIMNEY SWIFT TT COMES LATE AND GOES EARLY.
A Bird of Marvellous Powers of
 Flight.

But the greatest glory of the matched
 trectory roof was the number Of the
 Iswifts, the largest, the least common,
 1 and. owing to their amazing powers of
 flight, unequaled by any other bird, ex-
 i cept the frigate, far the most interest
 ing of the swallow tribe. Not less than i twelve pairs used to build in the roof, and always in the same holes, doubt less identically the same birds in each, though I never proved it to demon strate. as I might have done, by tying
 small pieces of differently -colored silk to the claws of the old birds which I held. year after year, in my hand, and
 which I seemed to know and which
 seemed to know me so well, Few birds attracted the attention of old Gilbert l White more than the swift. He chroni-
 cled the dates of their arriyaland de-
 parture; he ascribed the peculiarities of their structure and of the vermin which
 finest them: he speculated on their 1 love-making and their hibernating.
 The Natural History of Selborne I
 knew almost by heart when I was a boy Of twelve, and I well remember the zest with which handled the first swift I had ever found in it's nest, when it oc- cured to me that was treading longo intervallo certainly, but still treading in | the great naturalists footsteps. But
 now, when come to think of it, 1t was not exactly treadfng in his footsteps; for have grave doubts whether the tal1-absorbent fellow of Oriel ever climbed a tree, or even mounted a lad der in his life. It was a ''bold boy"--a
 'bold bad boy" he probably thought
 him-and not the old naturalist himself, who climbes the "beech in Selborne Hanger, though, standing on so steep and dizzy situation" on which a pair
 of honey -buzzards had built their nest, and who brought down the one egg that
 was in it. He never dilates upon the
 beauty or the charm of the eggs of a
 bird of prey as you see them lying in
 the nest, when, after a weary struggle
 upward, you are at length able to look
 down at them from above; and that I
 feel sure he must have done, had he
 ever seen them therein, for it is one of
 the crowning joys of the lover of birds
 But all that he could do on terra firma, and infinitely more than any one else 3hadever done before, or has done since,
 he did. In his eyes-and well, indeed,
 is it for our self-appreciation that there are some people who take that view man was one of the least important and least interesting of animals The bio-
 graphy of his old tortoise, "Timothy,n
 interested him far more than the bio- graphy of .'Tfmothy's" equally note
 worthy contemporaries General Give and General Wolfe, George Washington
 and the Earl of Chatham. The fall of
 Quebec was a matter of less moment in
 his eyes than the fall of the immemo- rial raven-tree, to which the mother
 bird clung so faithfully till she was
 whipped down by the twigs and brought dead to the ground"
 The swift arrives So late, about the 10th of May, and departs so early, about the 10th of August, that once landed here he has no time to waste, like the swallow or the martin, in look ing about him. But how does he get the materials for his nest? He is un- der strange disabilities in this respect; he can neither perch upon tree, nor stand upon the ground, nor walk a yard. He can hardly even crawl, and if he once touches the ground by acci- dent 1t is@a question whether he will 1 ever be able to rise again. The Alpine swift, which builds, it is said, to the | number of two hundred in Berne cathe- dral, has the difficulty solved for him | by the kindly keeper of the tower, who | makes it his business to scatter broad: l cast into the air, during the building | season, feathers and horsehair and bits | of paper which are caught up in mid- l air, in eager rivalry, by the swifts ca- reering round, and are promptly carried I to their holes. have watched our na- live swifts for hours and have never seen them catch a feather in the air or | carry it or any other building material to their homes. The nest consists ex- clusively, I believe, of the debris of the thatch in which it is built, or of feath- CTS and other material carried in by other birds who have used the hole be- fore, cemented together into a very rough saucer by the viseous saliva of the birds own mouth. The nest is al- ways built close to the point of entry, 50 that there is no laborious crawl, ei- .her from it or to it, and the bird can