22 NEBRASKAland • JUNE 2018
O
ne fall evening while
walking the dogs around
the neighborhood and
Irving Middle School
in Lincoln, Nebraska, a
small group of parents waiting for their
kids at soccer practice were pointing
up to a massive vortex of swirling,
chattering silhouettes descending into
the school's towering chimney. "Look
at all the bats!" I heard someone say.
At first, I thought they were, too. But
as we watched I realized these were
birds, and they were disappearing
into the chimney, not coming out
of it for the night. And they were
using a nearby church's chimney,
too. I went home and did some quick
research. They were a huge migrating
flock of chimney swifts.
Chimney swifts are those dark
boomerang shapes that chitter in the
sky from dawn to dusk over our towns
and cities in Nebraska, across the
Midwest and all the way to the East
Coast.
With a wingspan of 14 inches but
weighing just less than an ounce,
chimney swifts are part of a larger
group of bird species including
swallows, goatsuckers and other swift
species called "aerial insectivores."
They specialize in eating flying insects
(especially mosquitos), and like bats,
an individual can eat 2,000-3,000
insects per day.
In other words, if bats are the night
shift, swifts are the day shift, working
hard for us as 100 percent organic,
nature-certified, non-GMO pest control
agents, sweeping the skies 24 hours a
day, and they work for free.
Chimney swifts are neo-tropical
Chimney swifts dive toward their roost head first, but as they enter a chimney, they
will turn right-side-up and drop in feet first.
Left: Distribution of the chimney swift
in North America.
Previous pages: Swifts circle the
chimney at Irving Middle School
before descending to roost on an
early autumn evening in Lincoln,
Nebraska.
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