Swift Sunset

My birthday gift from my oldest daughter Ardyth is an "Activity of the Month." Each month she has decided on a specific activity for her and I to do. It's the gift that keeps on giving, and I'm looking forward to each month's activity.

For September, she took me to see a birding phenomenom (the red squiggly line tells me I've misspelled it, but spell check doesn't seem to be working) at my old grade school. Up until a few months ago, it had been many years since I had even driven by the old school--now I was going there for the second time in about 3 months.

Seems that much like the sparrows of San Jan Capistrano, every September a rather large flock of swifts nests in the chimney of Chapman Elementary School in Portland. I believe their web site mentioned counts as high as 10,000 swifts roosting in the chimney. I have no idea how they could count them, but since it's a count by the Audobon Society, I guess we'll take their word for it. This goes on for pretty much the whole month, after which I assume they fly south for the winter. I didn't see anything on the web site to tell me where they went after September.

About an hour before sunset, hundreds of people gather on the lawn of the school and on the lawn of Wallace Park, across the street from the school. Ardyth lives about 10 blocks from the school, so we decided we'd get our exercise for the day by walking. Good decision, since the area was packed with cars full of people coming to see this event. We sat on the corner of what would have been 26th Avenue, had the powers that be not decided to fill in the street between the school and the park many years ago, and Pettygrove St. Plenty of people were already in the park and on the school grounds, and many more arrived after we did. We watched for the birds, and we watched the people. After a while, we could see tiny little birds flying around the school and the chimney, although they kept flying away. When they returned, there were more of them. I still couldn't figure out how anyone could accurately keep count, but this continued for probably half an hour at least. It was getting darker, and we wondered if the birds would do their show while we could still see something.

Ardyth & I also wondered how the birds would get into the chimney. We couldn't see them just flying in without doing harm to themselves, but how else would they do it? When it was almost too dark to see anything, suddenly a swarm of the birds, in tornado-like formation, hovered over the chimney and sort of "swooped" in. People were oo-hing and ah-ing over the sight. In just a matter of minutes (or less) another group repeated the process. I didn't keep count of how many groups of birds made this trip into the chimney. People continued to ooh and ahh, and even applauded for the birds.

When it appeared that the show was over for the night, we picked up the blanket and proceeded to walk to Rose's on 23rd Ave. where we enjoyed a luscious dessert. The walk was nice, and we didn't have to fight the traffic to get home.

Thanks Ardyth, for a fun evening and a great way to start our "Activity of the Month" activity.

For more information on the "Swift Watch" as it is called, go here:
http://www.audubonportland.org/local-birding/swiftwatch