By Burt Glover

It is difficult to recall the first species of bird I became aware of as a very young child. If I had to guess, I would most likely choose the chimney swift. Our house had four large chimneys where the swifts nested each year. Some of my earliest memories involve toddling over to the metal coverings on our fireplaces and listening to the chirping of the nestlings above. Playtime outside was frequently put on pause to watch with awe the acrobatics of those little “flying cigars,” dipping and wheeling, and soaring so effortlessly through the skies above – twittering all the while. 

Chimney swifts spend most of the lives “on the wing” — flying as much as 500 miles per day, according to the Wildlife Center of Virginia, and eating upwards of 6,000-12,000 mosquitoes, flies, spiders, beetles and other insects with their somewhat large mouths.

The configuration of their short legs prevents the birds from perching on limbs like other birds, so they remain in perpetual flight. They even take their baths on the wing, belly-flopping on the surface of a pond, then shaking the water through the feathers as they fly away. Their flight stops only when nesting or roosting at night. In compensation for the inability to perch, they have specialized tail feathers and toe nails — similar to woodpeckers — that allow them to cling to vertical surfaces such as the interiors of chimneys, barn silos, and tree hollows.

Chimney swifts are migratory birds, spending their winters in South America. In the springtime, they return to our area and search out a suitable nesting site. In the absence of human habitation, these sites traditionally consisted of abandoned woodpecker nests or in hollow trees in old growth forests. When the forests were cut down, they readily adapted to nesting in chimneys.

Male and female birds gather nesting materials by breaking off twigs in mid-flight, which they glue to the inside wall of a chimney with their saliva to make a ledge-type nest. About halfway through nesting season, this ledge proves to be too small to contain its 4 to 5 chicks, and nestlings must cling to the side of the chimney until they are able to fly.

Downtown Aiken was always the perfect place to indulge in chimney-swift watching. All summer, scores of them could be seen soaring in the skies above. When I worked at the Cinema Theater, I often made a point to sit out on the curb in the evenings and watch them. Beginning in August/September, at the end of nesting season, the swifts would gather into huge flocks, circling over the city — thousands and thousands of them — their intense twittering filling the evening sky. In those last minutes as twilight drew, the massive flock would form into what seemed to be a giant tornado, swirling slowly, ever downward, into the chimneys of the houses somewhere behind Eliot Office Supply. 

Like so many other things in my life, I assumed that the chimney swifts would always be there to see. Since my childhood days, their numbers have decreased everywhere. Hollow trees are scarce, and the chimneys of today are often capped off and/or lined with slippery steel inserts. According to the Audubon Society, chimney swift numbers have been reduced by as much as 53% in the US and 90% in Canada..

Here seems a good place to mention that chimney swifts are a protected species under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 . This designation, in itself, isn’t enough to protect them. Fortunately, there are individuals and organizations working to share information on how to be good neighbors to chimney swifts. A starting point for basic information can be found at this page at the Wildlife Center of Virginia. Another site, which may take extra effort to navigate, is chimneyswift.org which has a wealth of information, including directions for building a chimney swift tower for nesting.

The good news from my neighborhood is that the six to eight chimney swifts that soar the skies over my house returned from their migration this year, right on time, in early April. I often sit in the morning sun just to watch their aerial acrobatics. My house has two chimneys, both of them open to the hope that a pair will find them a suitable place to raise a family.

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Contributor Burt Glover became an accidental naturalist during his earliest childhood days exploring the dirt roads, backyards, polo field and barns of the Magnolia-Knox-Mead neighborhood of 1950s Aiken. Birds are his first love, and he can identify an impressive range by song alone. He asserts that he is an observer, not an expert, on the topics of his writings, which range from birds, box turtles, frogs and foraging, to wasps, weeds, weather and beyond.