Western Bird Guide: Birds of the Rockies and West to the Pacific

by Charles K. Reed

VAUX SWIFT.

424. Chætura vauxi. 4½ inches.

This small Swift is not nearly as common as the preceding, is much paler in color and white on the under parts and throat. Their habits are much like the last, only that they make use of hollow trees in which to place their nests, which are made of twigs glued to the tree with the glutinous saliva of the birds, forming a very shallow platform in which they deposit three or four pure white eggs. They are on the wing much of the time during the day catching insects, or several pairs seemingly at play in the air, generally at quite high elevations, toward dusk returning to their nesting places.