By Staff
Recently, us Dowagiac residents watched with nostalgic sadness as the old Junior High School was demolished. Now all that remains of the grand old building is the majestic brick chimney towering up from the pile of rubble like a stoic oak tree. The local rumor mill is purporting that the chimney is being saved because it's a roosting and nesting site for chimney swifts. That would be a very noble act, I thought, surely far too noble for something standing so directly in the way of progress. I checked into it and, as suspected, the chimney swift sanctuary is slated to soon be toppled.
Chimney swifts are one of the few species that benefited from the encroachment of man. Originally they nested in hollow trees, particularly the immense, old growth giants. In 1808 Audubon wrote, "Sycamores of a gigantic growth, and having a mere shell of bark and wood to support them, seem to suit them (swifts) best; and wherever I have met with one of these patriarchs of the forest rendered habitable by decay, there I have found the swifts." Replacing the fast disappearing big, hollow trees were man's chimneys, especially the large, tall ones of factories and other commercial buildings which the swifts found to be even superior to the native trees.
Chimney swifts are the avian equivalent of ultra-high speed fighter jets. Shaped like cigars with wings, they race high across the skies, often seemingly playing tag with each other in a contest of speed, skill and dodging. They are specialized for high speed aerial life. Their long, saber-like wings are held stiff at the joints, never bent like swallows. Barn swallows may be more graceful but the swifts, as their name implies, are faster. Swifts do nearly everything on the fly, rarely landing except to roost and nest. They catch and eat insects while on the wing. They drink by skimming over the surface and dipping their bill into the water and they collect nest material by grabbing twigs with their feet as they fly by. It's believed some even copulate while airborne.
One of nature's more spectacular events comes in the spring and fall when chimney swifts are gathered by the thousands for migration and use a single chimney for their sleeping quarters. In the evening they gather in an immense, whirling, wheel-like mass to enter the chute. Here's naturalist John Burroughs’ description of this grand, going-to-bed spectacle written back in 1917 (with some omissions for brevity), "One fall they gathered and took refuge for the night in a large chimney-stack near me for more than a month and a half – 10,000 of them, I should think, filling the air above – like a whirling swarm of huge black bees, but saluting the ear with a multitudinous chippering instead of a humming … After a great many feints and playful approaches, the whirling ring of birds would suddenly grow denser above the chimney; then a stream of them, as if drawn down by some power of suction, would pour into the opening. For only a few seconds would this downward rush continue; then, as if the spirit of frolic had again got the upper hand of them, the ring would rise, and the chippering and circling go on. In a minute or two the same maneuver would be repeated, the chimney, as it were, taking its Swallows at intervals to prevent choking. It usually took a half hour or more for the birds all to disappear down its capacious throat."
Surprisingly, it wasn't until a few decades ago that we knew where chimney swifts migrated to during the winter. It seemed as if they gathered on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico and then just disappeared, even causing speculation that they hibernated in the mud. We now know they over winter in Amazonian Peru.
Though still common, chimney swifts are declining at an alarming rate of 6 percent per year. Hardly surprising. While chimney's filled in for the big, hollow trees as they fell what can fill in now for the obsolete chimney's as they crumble to the ground? Carpe diem.