. Gray Lady and the birds; stories of the bird year for home and school . adapted it to his own use. The Chimney Swift, that you all know as the ChimneySwallow, is one of the most abundant and best-known birdsof the eastern part of the United States. With troops offledglings, catching their winged prey as they go, and lodg-ing by night in some tall chimney, the flocks drift slowlysouth, joining with other bands until, on the northern coastof the Gulf of Mexico, they become an innumerable they disappear. Did they drop into the water andhibernate in the mud, as was believed of old, the
. Gray Lady and the birds; stories of the bird year for home and school . adapted it to his own use. The Chimney Swift, that you all know as the ChimneySwallow, is one of the most abundant and best-known birdsof the eastern part of the United States. With troops offledglings, catching their winged prey as they go, and lodg-ing by night in some tall chimney, the flocks drift slowlysouth, joining with other bands until, on the northern coastof the Gulf of Mexico, they become an innumerable they disappear. Did they drop into the water andhibernate in the mud, as was believed of old, their oblitera-tion could not be more complete. In the last week inMarch a joyful twittering far overhead announces theirreturn to the Gulf coast, but the intervening five monthsis still the Swifts secret. The mouse-coloured Bank Swallows, that we saw herein flocks a few weeks ago, are almost cosmopolitan, andenliven even the shores of the Arctic Ocean with theirgraceful aerial evolutions. Those that nest in Labradorallow a scant two months for building a nest and raising. THE FLIGHT OF THE BIRD 153 a brood, and by the first of August are headed weeks later they are swarming in the vicinity of Chesa-peake Bay, and then they, too, pass out of the range of ourknowledge. In April they appear in northern SouthAmerica, moving north, but not a hint do they give of howthey came there. The rest of the species, those thatnest to the south or west, may be traced farther south, butthey, too, fail to give any clew as to where they spend thefive winter months. Which one of the Wise Men can tell us? No out the window now; there are two Night Hawks,first flying high and then dropping suddenly throughthe air. Is it not hard to realize that, while you are goingto and fro every day between your homes and school,and by and by having to dig paths through the snow inorder to get there, those two slender birds will have flown5000 miles to find a new summer, and will be having ava
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