An Air Show that's for the Birds

The best aerial acrobats you’ll ever see might be performing just above your rooftop every evening.   Quick and graceful in the air, finding refuge and nest sites in masonry flues, there is probably no more  aptly named creature than the chimney swift.   Almost constantly in flight, diving and swooping for insects during the day, consider yourself lucky if you share your home with these birds whose shape has earned them the nickname “flying cigar.”

In mid May, my wife Mary and I found ourselves in the small eastern Connecticut city of Willimantic where a flock of likeminded people had gathered to celebrate these winged marvels.  Once famous for thread manufacture, the area is a hotbed of swift roosting.  We gathered for dinner at the Main Street Café, a brewpub housed in an elegant former post office constructed of limestone and reminiscent of a classical temple.  A hearty meal in the two-story-tall dining room with wainscoted walls was washed down with a couple pints of Flying Cigar Ale.  A portion of the proceeds of this special brew was donated to swift conservation.  Swift researchers from the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) and the University of Connecticut circulated among the maze of wooden tables like party hosts, and answered diners’ questions about the birds.

Swifts have an unusual relationship with humanity.  As with many birds, encroaching civilization destroyed much of their habitat and threatened the species’ survival.  But these remarkably adaptable animals found that buildings presented entirely new opportunities for nesting and raising young.  Originally making their homes largely in hollow trees that were cut down with the advance of settlement, they found masonry chimneys a viable and more plentiful substitute in which to build their wall-pocket nests of sticks glued together and affixed to the masonry with saliva.   The birds thrived.

Today they are again threatened with habitat loss at the hands of civilization.  With technological changes, many buildings no longer have chimneys or they use metal flue pipes in which the swifts cannot  get a purchase and are unable to nest.  There’s also an increase in chimneys fitted with caps that block entry.  In Connecticut alone, DEEP estimates that renovations will make 40% of chimneys unsuitable for swifts over the next decade.  Combine habitat disappearance with pesticides, pollution, and other issues and it spells trouble for swifts.  The population is in long term decline throughout its range.

At dusk, a group gathered near the columned entry to the old postal station and watched the birds flap and glide through the darkening evening sky.  They were “erratic avian missiles seeking luckless winged insects,” as naturalist Edward Howe Forbush termed them early in the twentieth century.  We had our sights on a chimney rising above the stately brick and brownstone town hall with its verdigris domed clock tower.

The swifts moved in graceful arcs, punctuated sometimes with a precipitous detour for prey.  Their chittering could be heard over traffic as they called to one another.  Silhouetted in sooty brown at first, they grew gradually darker as light leaked from the sky.  Some of them began making practice dives at the chimney.  Swooping down and pulling out of their descent just as they reached the opening, they appeared to be daring each other to go first and call it a day.  The birds coasted and darted, coasted and darted.

Out of the gloaming one of the swifts finally dove into the chimney.  Almost instantly it was followed by hundreds of others.  They descended in an avian vortex, a tornado of birds so quickly disappearing that it seemed like a powerful suction was at work.  All my camera could catch was a series of dark, spectral profiles.  Though the phenomenon was expected, it was so rapid and fleeting as to seem almost magical.  There wasn’t a face without a smile.

Many people observe chimney swifts not knowing what they are.  Discovering them not only reveals one of nature’s wonders close to home, but renews that sense of wonderment often thought to have been lost in childhood.