chimneys

As part of InvestigateWest's advancing story on the Pacific Flyway, this past Saturday I spent the evening with a thick, buzzing crowd of bird watchers as we gathered in semi-rural Monroe, Washington for a twice a year avifauna spectacle – the fall migration of Vaux’s Swifts.

[caption id="attachment_3838" align="alignright" width="270" caption="Photos by Natasha Walker"][/caption]

By dusk, the grassy lawn outside Frank Wagner Elementary School was all but overflowing with plastic lawn chairs, picnic blankets and bobbing swift headbands, courtesy of the school's crafty students (see photo). Education booths hosted by local Audubon Society chapters lured both amateur and experienced “Swifties,” who were eager to talk about their love for a bird that weighs less than two quarters, and shows its face only in May and September.

About a thousand of these cigar-shaped creatures descended on the school’s ancient, unstable brick chimney that night – as always, thirty minutes before sunset and in a counter-clockwise, tail-first spiral. Once inside, they overlap like shingles on the brick walls to hibernate for the evening.

[caption id="attachment_3844" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="Vaux's Swifts descend into Monroe chimney"][/caption]

The sunset aeronautics are stunning, but the night is not just a show for the flight-hearted.