home again

Chimney swifts are built for flight. With wings several inches longer than their narrow, tapered bodies, they look like flying cigars; but they’re really incredible flying machines. The sooty gray birds have very small legs and feet; but that’s OK because they rarely use them. They spend most of their lives and certainly the majority of their waking hours, flying, foraging for insects.

Chimney swifts are also long distance migrants that winter in eastern Peru. They almost always return to the skies over my Chapman Ridge home on April 10 or 11, but I was out of town on the 10th and yesterday, the 11th, was very stormy, heavy rains fell throughout the state.

I woke up this morning wondering: are the swifts back? Peru is a long, long way away. It's time, or did the storms knock them off course? I had only been on the back deck a few minutes when I looked up and saw a group of five swifts flying over the house. After six months south of the border, they were back.

Now, I must get the chimney ready for their nesting.

- Chimney swift illustration by Stephen Lyn Bales