[Mnbird] Chimney Swift

[Steve Weston]

One of my fondest memories was watching Chimney Swifts dancing a courtship
display over an abandoned one room school in SW Minnesota. Two of the birds
joined in mid-air hurtling toward the ground, swooping away from each other
only a foot or two above ground. Later research revealed that while this is
a common occurrence in Europe where the swift species and social mores are
different, I could find no reports of Chimney swifts doing it on the wing.
They were reported or suspected of doing it in the privacy of their chimney
bedroom.
Another observation from those days, while other species were paired up
during mating season, chimney swifts always seemed to be going around in
threes.

Steve Weston
On Quigley Lake in Eagan, MN
sweston2g at gmail.com


On Thu, Sep 21, 2023 at 8:08 AM Allen Batt via Mnbird <
mnbird at lists.mnbird.net> wrote:

>   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
>
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