Chimney Swift Sit

On a balmy summer Saturday evening in June, a crowd gathered in the parking lot of a historic West Side neighborhood in St. Paul. People set up their lawn chairs and picnic blankets and munched on popcorn, waiting for the show. Not a movie, not a band, not Shakespeare in the Park. No, we were there to witness the show of Chimney Swifts descending from the sky into their night roost in the chimney of Casa de Luz, a church and rectory on George Street.

This Chimney Swift Sit event was sponsored by the MN DNR’s Non-game Program, the US Fish & Wildlife Service, Urban Bird Collective, Land of Lakes Bird Alliance, and Saint Paul Bird Alliance.

Monica Bryand from Urban Bird Collective and Mags Edwards of the DNR Non-game Program told us about the statewide Chimney Swift Recovery Project now underway. It is a community-based scientific project that everyone can join for free. The goal is to find Swift roosts, count Swifts, and track those numbers as they change week to week, including when they arrive in the spring and when they leave for South America, where they overwinter.

To learn more about the Swift Recovery Project and see how you can get involved, visit the MN DNR Chimney Swift Project.

It is important that we do all we can to help the Swifts. They are in steep decline. The loss of their roosting and nesting sites, along with the collapse of the insect population, puts Chimney Swifts in danger of extinction.

If you get a chance to go to a Chimney Swift Sit, do it! At our Sit on the West Side, I met so many neighbors. One family was very proud of their beautiful historic home and of hosting the Chimney Swifts. One neighbor had never heard of Swifts until that night. He was so grateful to learn. He told me about his parakeet and how much the bird means to him. Suddenly, my friend Arthur Brady showed up! He had been visiting his dad across the street and wondered what all the hullabaloo was about. Arthur started thinking that his dad’s house has a chimney of Swifts, too. “I always thought they were bats!” Arthur said. 

That’s the thing about Chimney Swifts, and birds in general, they help us humans connect with each other on common ground. Birds show us we are all related.

Kiki Sonnen – SPBA President

Photo Ben Cvengros