I am fortunate. There is a stand of tall, old trees that I can see from my backyard. This year, I often go outside early in the morning to enjoy a cup of coffee and look out towards these trees. There are three in particular that stand out. On the left is an American Ash, to the middle-right there is a Tulip Poplar, and on the right, just beside the Poplar, is a Sycamore. They grow in a creek bed that runs through this small wood.
The creek meanders through its small valley. Over the years and centuries the stream has cut a bed for itself that is approximately 10 feet below the overall terrain and less than a tenth of a mile wide. Maybe at one time it was a cow pasture.
But now, since the valley is low and the stream pushes through it during rainy seasons, it has never been developed. However, because of the stream and its valley, there is a green belt of trees that snakes though my small town and out into the county. This green-way is a nature preserve. It harbors deer and foxes and other sub-urban wildlife. And it is a haven for birds that are not generally seen this far from the tree covered mountains to our West. And in the upper reaches of the trees, under the broad leaves of the Sycamore and the Polar, and beneath the delicate leaves of the Ash, there are thousands of broods of flying insects. But, the only ones that I can see are the Fireflies that flash in the evenings.
Today I am not thinking of the beauty of this small valley nor of the denizens that are concealed inside its narrow borders. Today I am thinking of a feathered visitor that arrives each year in the late Spring and early Summer while passing to the North., and again as it passes through in the Fall as it makes its way South. It is the Chimney Swift (Chaetura pelagica). These delicate birds soar through the air above me as they pass close to the tops of the trees to catch flying insects. The Chimney Swift is a common bird of North America, East of the Rockies. Some will build their nests locally, assuming they find a suitable location. Others are passing through on their way North to the limits of their range on the Canadian side of the Great Lakes of North America.
While they are here what a show they put on! From my backyard I have only a small patch of sky in which to look up, but in the mornings when I am sitting having a cup of coffee, I can see these birds sail through the air, the sun shining on their dark wings and reflecting as the birds twist and turn showing an alternating brightness on the underside and then the sooty dark upper-wing and body. It is as if their wings were hammered steel, winking flame of fire. These aerial acrobatics amaze me as the birds suddenly turn to snatch a flying insect from the air. Several sites I read state that a pair of breeding adult Swifts feeding a brood of chicks will consume upwards of 6,000 flying insect a day.
In the Fall the Swifts turn their thoughts to warmer climes and head South. In The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame’s masterpiece, Rat challenges the swallows on why they do not stay in England as the year turns away from summer. The birds reply, “Ah, Yes, the call of the South, the South. … Its songs, its hues, its radiant air.”
It is the same with the Chimney Swift. As Summer ends the birds leave the Great Lakes. They leave the Blue Ridge Mountains. They leave the Georgia shore. But where did they go? For many years no one knew where the Chimney Swifts went.
In 1943, this changed. A scientist studying the indigenous people of the forests at the headwaters of the Amazon River in Peru spotted a curious necklace on one of the people. He asked to examine it and was able to purchase it. The necklace was made of the tiny metal bands that are placed on the legs of birds to track their migration. He returned the bands to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) of the Department of the Interior. The FWS confirmed the bands had been placed on Chimney Swifts in several locations, five States (primarily Tennessee) and a Canadian province. The birds had been killed for food in Peru, and the small metal tags were strung into a necklace.
The FWS put out a press release in November 1944 that announced “The solution [has been discovered] of a centuries-old riddle of bird migration — the location of the winter home of the Chimney Swift .”
When I recently learned this I marveled at the thousands of miles these birds, which I watched over my morning coffee, had crossed. I know that they soon they will hear “the call of the South”, and they again will take their ancestral route to find “ the songs, the hues, and the radiant air” of far Southern climes.
A site of the Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency about the Chimney Swifts. https://www.tn.gov/twra/wildlife/birds/chimney-swift.html#:~:text=The%20wintering%20range%20of%20the%20Chimney%20Swift%20was,stations%20in%20Chattanooga%2C%20Knoxville%2C%20Nashville%2C%20Clarksville%2C%20and%20Memphis.
Other sites regarding the Chimney Swift and their range and habitat include; http://www.prestonmnchamber.com/play/attractions/chimney-swift/ and http://www.chimneyswifts.org/
The FWS 1944 Press Release may be found at, https://www.fws.gov/news/Historic/NewsReleases/1944/19441112.pdf