MONROE — With the return of spring just around the corner, anticipation is building for the return of the Chimney Swifts to their nests in the chimneys of the Monroe Arts Center and Rose House.
What is a Chimney Swift?
A bird best identified by silhouette, the smudge-gray Chimney Swift (Chaetura pelagica) is an “aerial insectivore,” which means they feed exclusively on the wing, spending their days flying overhead and scooping up and eating insects. An individual swift eats 1,000 to 12,000 flying insects — like beetles and mosquitoes — a day, keeping bug populations under control and reducing the ever-increasing risk of vector-borne diseases that humans face.
Its tiny body, curving wings, and stiff, shallow wingbeats give it a flight style as distinctive as its fluid, chattering call. This enigmatic little bird spends almost its entire life airborne. When it lands, it can’t perch — it clings to vertical walls inside chimneys or in hollow trees or caves.
Chimney Swifts historically nested and roosted in hollow trees. As American pioneers moved westward across the continent, they cleared forests and removed the swifts’ natural habitat. The birds that Audubon called American Swifts became known as Chimney Swifts as they readily adapted to the masonry chimneys erected by those same pioneers. Over the decades, the range of the swifts expanded with the ever-increasing availability of this new, man-made habitat.
However, environmental changes, including fewer chimneys and a sharp drop in insect populations, are now challenging this species. Their population has declined by more than 50% in the last half-century, according to the Audubon Society. Their plight is part of a broad trend of declining bird populations, particularly aerial insectivores such as swallows, nighthawks and whippoorwills. Since 1970, North America has lost 3 billion birds. Like all birds, the swifts need our help now more than ever and that’s where the Monroe Arts Center comes in.
As a regular attendee of MAC’s Sounds of Summer outdoor concert series and an avid birder, Rebecca Gilman, who is also a MAC Board Member, noticed that hundreds of Chimney Swifts were diving into MAC Chimneys at sunset each evening. With renovations beginning on the parsonage, now known as Rose House, located on the southwest corner of the MAC property, Gilman and the Wisconsin Chimney Swift Working Group brought the problem of the little birds to the attention of Executive Director, Kathy Hennessy and the rest MAC Board of Directors.
The fix was relatively easy as the swifts do not hurt the chimneys by perching or nesting there, nor do they come inside the buildings where they roost. With financial assistance from the Wisconsin Chimney Swift Working Group, MAC repaired the chimneys and left them uncapped, creating a permanent home for the large number of Chimney Swifts who use them during migration and in the summer. According to Hennessy, “MAC is committed to maintaining the chimneys as a safe home for the Swifts now and into the future. MAC is officially a Chimney Swift landlord.” MAC will be planning a Swift Night Out this summer for the community to see the little birds.
