![]() The swifts, who return to their natal nesting area each year, are left without protective homes.Ĭhimney swifts’ long wings and short legs preclude perching on branches like most birds instead they seek shelter inside man-made chimneys. Old factories and schools with large chimneys like McHarg School’s are being torn down, and most new houses have capped chimneys with smooth metal liners if they have chimneys at all. Swifts use their gluey saliva to build cup-like twig nests against the chimney’s rough interior walls. “When I’d take my daughter to the playground in the evenings, I enjoyed watching the swifts swooping around the chimney as it got dark-hundreds of swifts,” he says. Rankin still remembers when he became aware of swifts, at the McHarg School some 30 years ago. The sight of these acrobatic birds swirling into funnels over the area’s largest chimneys at sunset is becoming increasingly less frequent. But the swifts’ greatest appeal for many, including Rankin, is the beauty of their swooping flight and murmuring chitter. A swift can dine on up to 10,000 mosquitoes, termites, flies and other insects a day during nesting season. The loss of chimney swifts is a loss to the community. If swifts can’t find shelter inside hollow trees or chimneys, they overnight out in the elements clinging to walls or cliff sides. While swifts are well adapted for flying, their long wings and short legs make it impossible for them to perch on branches like other birds. In Canada their numbers are down by more than 95 percent, partly due to the loss of safe nesting sites. The plight of chimney swifts is dire everywhere. The evening-time tumbling of swifts into chimneys is a spectacle to watch. By April 1-the swifts’ historical homecoming date in Southwest Virginia-the 18-foot tower of recycled brick was ready to welcome the first swifts. The Radford group had raised the necessary $15,000 over the winter months. ![]() Although McHarg chimney was gone, they planned an artificial chimney tower behind the school, specially designed for swifts by the architecture firm that created plans for the school renovation. Rankin, his wife Liz Altieri, and a band of Radford cohorts were determined to not let the swifts’ return to Radford last spring become a sad story. “The loss of nesting sites in traditional chimneys has really hurt them, that and the decline of the insect population.” “Chimney swifts are a ‘near-threatened’ species here and ‘threatened’ farther north,” Rankin says. Radford bird lover Wilson Rankin, intimately acquainted with the swifts’ nesting fidelity year after year, has reason to be deeply worried. What the exhausted avians didn’t know was that their landmark chimney home at Radford’s McHarg Elementary School was gone, demolished in a renovation. They fed on the wing, dodging skyscrapers, towers and hawks to reach their perennial nesting place. In early March a band of chimney swifts set off on their long flight home, winging some 3,000 to 4,000 miles from their winter quarters in South America toward Southwest Virginia’s New River Valley. Swifts can eat up to 10,000 insects a day.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |