When the basket cradle has been stuck against a chimney-side, it looks as if it were covered with a thin coat of isinglass. On this lattice from four to six white eggs are laid. A friend, who innocently started a fire in his library one cold, rainy mid-summer evening, was startled and shocked when a nest and eggs suddenly fell on the hearth. He had no idea birds were nesting in his chimney. The rush of their wings he had thought was the wind. Of course the fire melted the glue, when down fell the cradle. Happily there were no "babies and all" to tumble into the flames.
When the baby swifts are old enough to climb out of the lattice, they still cling near it for about a fortnight waiting for their wings to grow strong, before they try to leave the chimney. Apparently they hang themselves up to go to sleep. Shouldn't you think they would fall on the hearth down stairs? Doubtless they would but for their short, thin, stiff-pointed tail feathers which help to prop them up where they cling to the rough bricks and mortar of the chimney lining. Woodpeckers also prop themselves with their tail feathers, but against tree trunks. Not until swifts are a month old do the lazy little fellows climb out of their deep, dark cavern into the boundless sky, which is their true home. No birds are more tireless, rapid flyers than they. Their [{182}] small feet, weak from disuse, could scarcely hold them on a perch.
One day last July I picked up on the ground a young swift I thought had dropped from exhaustion in its first flight. As swifts had been nesting in one of the chimneys, I carried the young bird in my hand into the house, up stairs, out through an attic window onto the roof, climbed along the ridgepole in terror for my life, clinging by only one free hand to the peak of the roof, and at last reached the swift's chimney. Laying the sooty youngster on the stone chimney-cap I had crawled cautiously backward only a few feet, when lo! my charge suddenly bounded off into the air like a veteran to join a flock of companions playing cross-tag. As it wheeled and darted above the house, evidently quite as much at ease in the air as any of the merry, twittering company, don't you believe it started the laugh on me? But what had brought so able a young flyer to earth? My wounded vanity tempts me to believe that it had really dropped from fatigue and, once on the ground, was unable to rise again, whereas it was comparatively easy to launch itself from the chimney-top.
With mouths agape from ear to ear, the swifts draw in an insect dinner piecemeal, as they course through the air, just as the whip-poor-will, nighthawk and swallows do. [{183}] Fortunate the house where a colony elect to live, for they rid the air of myriads of gnats and mosquitoes, as they fly about overhead, silhouetted against the sky. Early in the morning and late in the afternoon are their hours for exercise. You will think, perhaps, that they look more like bats than birds. Watch their rapid wing-beats very closely and see if you can settle the mooted question as to whether they use both wings at once, or first one wing and then the other in alternate strokes. After you have noticed their peculiar, throbbing flight, you will never again confuse them with the graceful, gliding swallows. Although the swift is actually shorter than a sparrow, its spread wings measure over a foot across from tip to tip. No wonder it can fly every waking moment without feeling tired, and journey from Labrador to Central America for a winter holiday.
RUBY-THROATED HUMMINGBIRD
What child does not know the hummingbird, the jewelled midget that flashes through the garden, poises before a flower as if suspended in the air by magic, thrusts a needle-like bill into one cup of nectar after another, then whirs off out of sight in a trice? It is the smallest [{184}] bird we have. Suppose a fairy wished to pluck one for her dinner, as we should pluck a chicken; how large, do you think, would be the actual body of a hummingbird, without its feathers? Not much, if any, larger than a big bumble-bee, I venture to guess. Yet this atom of animation travels from Panama to Quebec or beyond, and back again every year of its brief life, that it may live where flowers, and the minute insects that infest them, will furnish drink and meat the year around. So small a speck of a traveller cannot be seen in the sky by an enemy with the sharpest of eyes. Space quickly swallows it. A second after it has left your garden it will be out of sight. This mite of a migrant has plenty of stay-at-home relatives in the tropics—exquisite creatures they are—but the ruby-throat is the only hummingbird bold enough to venture into the eastern United States and Canada.
What tempts him so far north? You know that certain flowers depend upon certain insect friends to carry their pollen from blossom to blossom that they may set fertile seed; but did you know that certain other flowers depend upon the hummingbird? Only his tongue, that may be run out beyond his long, slender bill and turned around curves, could reach the drops of nectar in the tips of the wild columbine's five inverted horns of plenty. The [{185}] Monarda or bee-balm, too, hides a sweet sip in each of its red tubes for his special benefit. So does the coral honeysuckle. There are a few other flowers that cater to him, especially, by wearing his favourite colour, by hiding nectar so deep that only his long tongue can drain it, and by opening in orderly succession so that he shall fare well throughout the summer, not have a feast one month and a famine the next. In addition to these flowers in Nature's garden that minister to his needs, many that have been brought from the ends of the earth to our garden plots please him no less. The canna, nasturtium, phlox, trumpet-flower, salvia, and a host of others, delight his eye and his palate. Don't you think it is worth while to plant his favourites in your garden if only for the joy of seeing him about? He is wonderfully neighbourly, coming to the flower-beds or window-boxes with undaunted familiarity in the presence of the family. A hummingbird that lived in my garden sipped from a sprig of honeysuckle that I held in my hand. But the bird is not always so amiable by any means. A fierce duelist, he will lunge his rapier-like bill at another hummer with deadly thrusts. A battle of the midgets in mid-air is a sorry sight. You may know a male by the brilliant metallic-red feathers on his throat. His mate lacks these, but her brilliancy has another [{186}] outlet, for she is one of the most expert nest-builders in the world. An exquisitely dainty little cup of plant down, felted into a compact cradle and stuccoed with bits of lichen bound on by spider-web, can scarcely be told from a knot on the limb to which it is fastened. Two eggs, not larger than beans, in time give place to two downy hummers about the size of honey-bees. Perhaps you have seen pigeons pump food down the throats of their squabs? In this same way are baby hummingbirds fed. After about three weeks in the nest, the young are ready to fly; but they rest on perches the first month of their independence more than at any time afterward. No weak-footed relative of the swift could live long off the wing. It is goodbye to summer when the last hummingbird forsakes our frost-nipped, northern gardens for happier hunting grounds far away.