With their twittering call barely audible through the factory noise, a flock of chimney swifts arrived just as the sun was ready to set as a couple of dozen people looked on outside a manufacturing plant in Geneva last week.
The group of bird watchers came to see the charcoal gray birds create a spinning formation and descend down the plant’s brick chimney where they would roost until they left the next morning.
Chimney swifts, known as “the flying cigar” in the bird world, are on their fall migration down to South America.
Thursday evening’s event was an encore show for Marion and Richard Miller of Batavia.
“We had a swift sit-in a few days ago,” Richard Miller said.
The chimney swift has a 5-inch-long body and a 12-inch wingspan and weighs less than an ounce. It is in constant motion when it is not clinging to the inside of a chimney, Marion Miller said. The bird does everything while flying, including eating and bathing.
“They are constantly in flight from the time they leave the chimney. They eat one-third of their weight in mosquitoes,” she said.
For bird lovers, the one big worry is that no chimney swifts will show up on a particular evening. But they did not disappoint Thursday evening as the sun was ready to set.
“They put a smile on my face,” said Miller, who was in charge of the bird count. Miller said there were approximately 900 chimney swifts flying overhead that night.
“We tend to worry there won’t be any chimney swifts. It’s like inviting a crowd and then the band doesn’t show up,” Richard Miller said.
The chimney swift leaves the area by early October and returns in early April.
“We sent scouts out a few weeks ago to look for chimney swifts,” Richard Miller said.
Fans of the bird report sightings on a Fox Valley Facebook group page. Normally chimney swifts rest and nest in hollow trees, but as those trees are cleared and population growth pushes out natural areas, the bird has had to adapt.
The birders are worried a loss of habitat will continue to diminish the bird’s population in the Fox Valley as older factory brick-and-mortar chimneys are removed or capped. Many new chimneys have smooth metal linings that are not conducive to a bird looking for something to cling onto during the night.
To help the birds out, conservation groups have built chimneys called chimney swift towers. Several years ago a group dedicated a tower in the 300 block of Shumway Avenue in Batavia in honor of the late Batavia Ald. Linnea Miller.
There are about seven chimney towers in forest preserves in Kane County now.
For chimney swift fans, watching the birds in action is a special treat.
“The bird creates a vortex before going into the chimney. It’s like a miniature tornado,” said Chris Madsen of St. Charles.
“This is one of the fall shows birders wait for,” he said on Thursday evening. “This was quite the performance.”
For information on local chimney swift sightings, go to www.facebook.com/groups/chimneyswiftsoverthefoxvalley.
Linda Girardi is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.
