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A SWIFT NIGHT OUT 2012 A Continent-wide Chimney Swift Roost Monitoring Project ___________________________________________
INDIVIDUAL REPORTS |
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Hales Corners, WI
* Number of swifts counted 5 · Time 6:00-7:30PM · * Number of swifts counted 2 · Time 7:00-7:35 PM · * Number of swifts counted 2 · *Time 6:45-7:15 ·
William Holton
Galena, OH
I. participated in a swift watch last Friday, but I did not do the counting since it was a program. I am waiting for others to submit a report. However, I did count on Saturday and I will paste my report below.
Saturday, 8 September 2012, four members of the Columbus Audubon Society met across from the 78" by 48" chimney that stands three stories high at the Galena Municipal Building, 109 Harrison Street, formally the Galena United Methodist Church. A clear sky at 66 degrees allowed a count of 850 swifts as they entered their roost between 19:53 and 20:23. For education, I had brought with me a Chimney Swift study skin, a swift tail, and a set of wings from the Ohio Wesleyan Museum. Darlene Sillick arrived with a swift nest, and study skins of a swift and a Nighthawk borrowed from the Ohio State University Museum of Biological Diversity. It was a good event. Swift on!
Dick Tuttle
We have no swifts to report for the counting period, either for August or September 2012. We would like to report that the chimney swifts have nested and stayed in our chimney into the fall, consistently, for over 50 years. 2010 was the last year they were here into the fall. They left early in 2011 which we thought was a fluke, but this year they left around the end of July. They arrived in the spring, had their nest and fledged the young. In July we counted about 15 birds and around the last week in July we noticed that they were gone.
Chapel Hill, NC
This year I saw no swifts at all. Last year we counted well over over
Girard, KS
81 swifts counted on September 8, 2012 Count lasted from 7:30 p.m. to 8:05 p.m. Location corner of St John & Carbon, Girard KS 66743 Residence chimney weather was clear and cool in 60's
Martha Price Sperry Galligar Audubon Society member
Saybrook Township, OH
Number of chimney swifts: 5 ea. at Depot Rd. freestanding cinderblock chimney rough estimate 500 ea. (20 minutes at an increasing rate averaging about 25 per minute) into State Rd. School chimney Time: 7:30 8:00 p.m. Date: September 12, and again at State Rd. School on Sept 13, 2012 Locations: Northeast Ohio Depot Rd. Saybrook Township, Ohio State Rd. School, 4200 State Rd. Ashtabula, Ohio 44004 Weather: cool with temperatures in the 60s and partly cloudy Bird Journal Chimney Swifts to Roost S. Leon Jesionowski September 12, 2012 At this moment in time interested in chimney swifts, this afternoon on the way home from school, coming a back way, I noticed an impressive free-standing cinderblock chimney on what looked like a near abandoned property near a set of railroad tracks. So, as the sundown approached in the west of northeast Ohio, Ruth Anne and I drove back to see if maybe swifts would be flying around in evidence. Sure enough, likely one family grouping of at least five swifts was swiftly darting and wheeling in arcs and reverse turns in around a quarter mile halo about the three story chimney tower.
Satisfied just knowing the swifts were around there, and still around here in the area, back on the road we pressed toward the octagonal, industrial, brick chimney at the eighty-five year old school where I worked for twelve years. In my years there I had noticed swifts overhead but had not thought much about them. Now, having seen a youtube video of swifts smoking into a similar sized chimney in Portland, Oregon, I was curious to see if anything of the like happened here.
Pulling into the school parking lot Ruth Anne started getting excited about groups of swifts she was seeing milling and wheeling in head-turning fluidities. Doors open and stepping out almost before the car had stopped we stood, pleased to witness the stretching and flexing of the thin and thicker mass as many dozens, probably hundreds of swifts, celebrated above the gaping chimney hole. A few dipped in and out again. Many a great many dipped toward the hole, wheeling back up and around. We had arrived at just the right moment. Just then, the first quanta of the string of the soaring bird vortex punched their way into the darkness of the chimney. Those following disappeared, too. .And drawn as if by viscosity the string thickened and thinned, more and less, constant in and more into the safe, anonymous void. More birds materialized above, the wheeling and dipping mass unchanged and in constant motion, though dozens and hundreds of birds had driven and dived in a controlled, head-first, wings seeming akimbo, half-fall into the chimney void. Kamikaze-like target practice. And still more wheeled and swooped around, about, above, thickening the gnat-like soup.
For more than moments, for several minutes of dusk, the birds kept diving into that pond of blackness until just one swift was still left out, flying in the same patterns. Once, twice, three times in crazy ellipsis around the tower, stabbing at the hole one time, and time again Then, leaving the tower, it flew away -- off toward the northwest.
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