Chimney swift (c) Michael Brown from
A fierce overnight storm had swept away the heat, humidity and bad air that crushed the Hudson Valley for three days. (It also toppled trees and knocked out power in neighboring Connecticut towns.) So when I went out to the old-fashioned glider on our deck for a late afternoon martini (with anchovie olives) the temperature was a cool 70 degrees with a light breeze, and the sky was a pleasing pastel blue with cotton ball clouds playing tag with a waxing gibbous moon. A mated pair of Baltimore orioles foraged in a spindly hop hornbeam, or ironwood; a cardinal was cheer-cheering the best day of the year so far, and the slender branches of young maples were swaying as a gray squirrel crossed our creek to nip off some tender tree buds for supper.
The best show, however, was a squadron of chimney swifts--"cigars on wings" as they're often described--feeding overhead. I love how old-time ornithologists wrote with elan about the subjects that they studied. Here's how Winsor Marrett Tyler described the chimney swift for Life Histories of North American Birds in 1940: "They have the habit of continual flight during the hours of daylight throughout the summer, and therefore keep always before our eyes when we look up at the sky. They exemplify speed and tireless energy; they sail and circle on set wings, then with flickering wing beats they are off in a burst of speed, shooting like an arrow through the air, chattering their bright notes as they race along--little arrows cutting the clouds over country, town and woodland."
Chimney swifts are a common sight today across the eastern half of the United States and southern Canada as they plow through an "aerial plankton" of flies, ants, termites, beetles, bugs and spiders with their gaping mouths while somehow avoiding stinging insects. The feeding flights of swifts often take them to an altitude of several thousand feet and some species have been clocked at speeds well in excess of 100 miles an hour. And here's an astonishing factoid: The European swift flies more than 500 miles a day during the nesting season.
Scientists say that chimney swift numbers were relatively few when hollow trees in virgin forests were their main nesting places. But the stone and brick chimneys of settlers' homes provided the birds with plenty of nesting cavities and their population exploded. We've always had resident swifts in our fireplace chimney at Seasons. Now, however, swifts appear to be declining because chimneys of newer houses are often unsuitable for their occupancy.