After spending yesterday underground chasing after moles, I figured we would head back to the sky today to observe an interesting bird called the Chimney Swift. Now, today’s Wild Fact was inspired by my dad who was telling me about a story he saw on the news. Apparently there were about 150 of these birds that were flocking to the chimney of a school in Nova Scotia or something like that. Sorry Dad, I don’t think I was actually listening too well :). Regardless of my listening skills, I figured it was the Chimney Swift he was talking about so today we are going to climb up a chimney in Nova Scotia to see if we can learn something about these birds.
The Chimney Swift is often referred to as the “Flying Cigar” as a result of their cigar-shaped body and long slender wings. For the most part it is extremely rare to ever catch a glimpse of the Chimney Swift in a perched position. This is probably due to the fact that they don’t actually sit on a perch like a regular bird. Instead they use their incredible claws to hang onto the sides of chimneys and other man-made structures. Believe it or not the Chimney Swift is an animal that actually benefited from European settlement in North America. Before humans came along, these little birds had to hang out in caves and similar natural structures. Once we came along, the number of nesting spots increased dramatically with the creation of chimney’s. Unfortunately, new chimney designs are making it very difficult for the Chimney Swift to utilize these structures. Who would have thought that a population of birds may be on the decline because we changed the design of our chimney?
When they aren’t hanging out in chimney’s the Chimney Swift will take to the skies. Normally, you will hear the high-pitched twittering (no, they are not actually Tweeting while they fly – although, i wonder what they would say with their 140 character limit) as they fly high above the city feasting on insects. In fact, these birds spend pretty much all of their time flying and will generally only land at their nest or to roost for the night. The Chimney Swift will even bathe while in flight! How is this possible? Well, while flying around they will dive towards a lake or other body of water, crashing their chest onto the surface of the water before shaking the water off of their feathers as they fly away. I would think that doing a belly flop every time you want to bathe would get tiresome and painful after awhile.
I guess it is time to crawl out of the chimney and brush off all of this soot. As promised, since you read today’s fact, I will give you a free one tomorrow. Make sure you stop by because it will be a good one to end the week with. Enjoy the rest of your day!
