Last night I stopped by East High School in Madison as dusk fell to check on
Chimney Swifts. I'd seen a few hundred using the central chimney over the
summer, but I was curious how many might show up during migration.
It was a pretty extraordinary flock, and hard to estimate while flying, but as
they began dropping in I started counting by fives as best I could, trying to
be conservative, only counting when the birds were stalling and dropping
straight. It took about twenty minutes and by the end (7:37pm), I'd estimated
about 1300 birds. Â
Given that it's possible that birds that looked like they were dropping in
actually moved past the chimney, and that my counts were off, I'm guessing that
the actual number is +/- a couple hundred.
Definitely worth checking out!
Kerry WilcoxMadison, Dane Co.
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