Across North America chimney swifts (Chaetura pelagica) and their look-alike western cousins, Vaux’s swifts (Chaetura vauxi), are migrating south for the winter.
Swifts eat flying insects so they migrate during the day when the insects are out. On hot days they circle high, coursing back and forth in the clouds of bugs. It doesn’t look like organized migration but they’re tending ever southward while they eat.
At dusk the swifts gather at big chimneys, circle in a vortex, then pop into the chimneys to roost, as shown in the video. On cold rainy days they roost during the day to conserve energy when the bugs don’t fly.
Vaux’s swifts are on their way to Central America but the chimney swifts will go much further, crossing the Gulf of Mexico to spend the winter in Columbia, Peru, Ecuador and western Brazil. I wonder if their over-water migration gave them the species name “pelagica.”
For the next several weeks, watch chimneys at dusk to see the swifts. Click here for suggested sites in Pittsburgh.
(video from Cornell Lab of Ornithology on YouTube, swifts photo by Jeff Davis)
Agree! It is amazing to see. In previous years I’ve seen them at the Avalon Elementary School in Avalon and also in Bellevue at the Lutheran Church that is across the street from the Bellevue Elementary School.
The Audubon Society has recently installed five chimney swift towers in South Park. You can see a photo of one if you go to the Friends of South Park website. Kate, now that you have mentioned the swifts will be migrating soon, I will definitely want to observe the chimney towers. Thanks!
Kate, have you heard of the swifts being in the smoke stacks at the Waterfront in Homestead? It seems like it would be a good place for them. I guess there is a possibility that the tops were closed off some how.
Lori, I’ve never seen swifts there… but I’ve never looked there either.
Every year a family of Chimney Swifts nests in our chimney. They don’t make a mess in the chimney either. The one drawback is for a few weeks the young ones become very noisy.
Come winter I take their cool half-nest they have left glued to the side and use it to start the first fire of the winter. Their nests are fascinating. I hope to one day see the Swifts collecting the nest material.
Online research about Swifts led me to a website that took reports every year on the first swift sightings in your area. From that I now know to expect the Swifts in the first week of May – last week of April this year.
I dig these birds.
What a timely story. I was out walking recently and saw a lot of chimney swifts circling about. They all seemed to be focusing on one chimney. They would swoop towards the chimney, but never enter, at least for the time that I watched. Wonder if they were making their migration preparations. I certainly enjoy watching them when I am out and about in the neighborhood.