[Mnbird] Chimney Swift

[Allen Batt]

  I saw a single Chimney Swift yesterday. 
  It strikes me as odd when I see only one. It’s like eating a single potato chip. “I can’t see just one,” I tell myself.
  But for the past several Breeding Bird Surveys, I’ve counted just one swift.
  The surgeon told me to think of a pleasant place before I went under the knife. I stared at a chimney in my thoughts. I’m no chimney sweep and haven’t even played one on TV, but I travel around each year, hoping for a good crop of chimney swifts. When the swifts zoom into a chimney to roost, it’s a curtain coming down on a magnificent play. I’ve seen flocks of swifts do their disappearing act in many chimneys, but the chimney I thought of was the one at Villa Maria that I visited annually for many years. Swifts may look like flying cigars, but they are memories on the wing. I remember those moments when I need them.

Al Batt
Freeborn County