Audubon
tells of a certain plane tree in Kentucky where he counted over nine thousand
of these swifts clinging to the hollow trunk.
Their nest, which is a loosely woven twig lattice, made of twigs of trees,
which the birds snap off with their beaks and carry in their beaks, is glued
with the bird's saliva or tree-gum into a solid structure, and firmly attached
to the inside of chimneys, or hollow trees where there are no houses about.
Two broods in a season usually emerge from the pure white, elongated eggs.
What a twittering there is in the chimney that the swifts appropriate after
the winter fires have died out! Instead of the hospitable column of smoke
curling from the top, a cloud of sooty birds wheels and floats above it. A
sound as of distant thunder fills the chimney as a host of these birds,
startled, perhaps, by some indoor noise, whirl their way upward. Woe betide
the happy colony if a sudden cold snap in early summer necessitates the
starting of a fire on the hearth by the unsuspecting householder! The glue
being melted by the fire, "down comes the cradle, babies and all" into the
glowing embers. A prolonged, heavy rain also causes their nests to loosen
their hold and fall with the soot to the bottom.
Thrifty New England housekeepers claim that bedbugs, commonly found on bats,
infest the bodies of swifts also, which is one reason why wire netting is
stretched across the chimney tops before the birds arrive from the South.
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