Every night around sunset the best show in town for anyone who loves nature and, in particular, birds, is watching the large flock of chimney swifts (Chaetura pelagica) at the corner of Center and Mountain Streets that return from a day out eating bugs to circle around a chimney and then dive down to roost for the night.
While they can be viewed from the street, the best place to watch this nightly bird flight extravaganza is from the outside top deck of Chelsea’s Corner Café & Bar. The chimney that serves as the summer home for the migratory birds is located near the deck.
The birds start circling around sunset, and then swoop up and down, sometimes appearing to be ready to dart down the chimney before braking abruptly for another spiral around the chimney, perhaps looking for one more bug to eat before retiring.
Chimney swifts move with incredible speed and agility. Their dark shapes against the evening sky are particularly interesting to watch when there are sunset colors. The show goes on for about 15-20 minutes before the last of hundreds of birds decides to call it a night.
“They are masters of flight, for sure,” said Dan Scheiman, Ph.D., bird conservation director for Audubon Arkansas. “It is exciting to see the chimney swifts gather around a tower and zoom in. Their wing shape allows them to be extremely fast and very agile. They’re really skilled flyers. Their vision and reflexes are way better than ours, allowing them to fly at high speeds and close together. Many flocking birds exhibit that type of behavior. For example, European starlings and red-winged blackbirds can seem to move as one organism when in large groups.”
The swifts eat a lot of insects, so they are beneficial just like purple martins and bats.
Chimney swifts are largely dependent on humans for providing nesting and roosting structures. Before European colonization of North America, the swifts nested in caves and large hollowed-out old growth trees.
“The hollowed out trees went the way of deforestation and the logging of old growth trees,” Scheiman said. “Probably some do sometimes nest in trees, but more often you will find them nesting in chimneys. Chimney swifts are common, but in decline. That is due to changes in building codes, changes in construction with few new chimneys being built and old chimneys being capped. Sometimes people hear the noise of swifts in their chimneys and then call a professional to come clean the birds out.”
Another issue is widespread insecticide use that reduces insect populations. Chimney swifts are insectivores; they only eat insects.
Chimney swifts spend nearly all their waking hours in flight. Scheiman said they have weak feet, and can’t perch on horizontal surfaces, only vertical ones.
“They are out all day flying and come back in at dusk,” Scheiman said. “Their nests are built inside the chimneys using saliva and sticks. There is another swift in Asia that makes its nest entirely out of saliva.”
Bird’s nest soup is actually considered a gourmet treat in Chinese cuisine. The bird’s nest has a gelatinous texture when dissolved in water.
The first chimney swifts arrive in Arkansas in the second week of March and are all gone by the last week of October. They migrate to Peru, Chile and Brazil for what is winter in North America, but summer in South America.
Audubon Arkansas says people can help the chimney swifts by building chimney swift towers. This replaces their roosting and nesting sites that are being lost. There is at least one nesting pair in the chimney swift tower at the Little Rock Audubon Center.
Scheimen suggests people interested in these birds consider participating in a citizen science program called A Swift Night Out that encourages people to gather where the chimneys swifts roost and count them.
“A Swift Night Out is a continent-wide effort to raise awareness about and encourage interest in chimney swifts and Vaux’s swifts,” says the website www.chimneyswifts.org. “As summer draws to a close and the swifts have finished raising their young, these fascinating aerial acrobats begin to congregate in communal roosts prior to their migration in the fall. Some roosts consist of an extended family group of a half a dozen birds or so, but the larger sites can host hundreds or even thousands of swifts. We encourage you to involve your local Audubon chapters, bird clubs, scout groups and neighbors in this exhilarating spectacle.”