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I’ve just added an new link to the Citizen Science page on this blog. This one is for Chimney Swift spring sightings on the Driftwood Wildlife Association’s Chimney Swift.org website. If you visit that page, you’ll see an updating map of 2007 first sightings. There’s an email address just below for reporting your first sighting of the season.

If you haven’t watched Chimney Swifts entering a chimney in the evening, it’s quite a treat. When we were in Nova Scotia in July 2005, we visited the Robie Tufts Nature Centre one evening, waiting with other visitors, to see the swifts descend into the chimney. You can read about it on this February 2006 post. I shot a little video clip of the event — not terrific as it was growing dark and my DVcamcorder isn’t that terrific — but it will give you some idea of how quickly the swifts can fly. Sorry it’s only in QT version as I wasn’t doing .mp4 clips at that time. As I wrote in back in February 2006:

They remind me a bit of falling leaves as they go into the final descent – but also a bit like a stream of dark smoke going into reverse and being sucked back into a chimney. There is sound on the clip — not great, but you should be able to hear the twittering of the swifts.

This morning, I did a bit more exploring around the Driftwood Wildlife Association’s Chimney Swifts.org website and discovered that artifical Chimney Swift towers are being constructed around North America, in order to provide suitable roost sites. Natural sites would be hollow trees, but swifts also like tall chimneys and will nest in them during the summer season when the chimneys aren’t in use. As so many old chimneys are now being demolished, and large hollow trees are scarce, these artificial chimney towers provide a suitable substitute. You can read more about it here. And here’s a map of known Chimney Swift towers. It looks like there must be one in western Quebec, perhaps not too far from my location here in eastern Ontario. If you go to that map page, there’s a photo of an artificial tower down below, and links to more information on their construction. If I were certain we would remain here for an extended period of time, I would definitely consider building one.

Tags: Chimney Swift, Chaetura pelagica, Robie Tufts Nature Centre, Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Chimney Swifts.org, Driftwood Wildlife Association