JUNE 2018 • NEBRASKAland 23
migrants, meaning they do not
require one home but many homes
to thrive, moving thousands of miles
annually between breeding grounds
in eastern and central North America
to wintering grounds in the tropics.
In fact, scientists have yet to identify
exactly where their core winter grounds
are, except to say that they are remote
and likely somewhere in the Upper
Amazon Basin.
Chimney swifts do not perch like
other birds standing on two feet.
Instead, they have specially designed
claws that allow them to cling to
vertical surfaces like bats, but right-side
up rather than upside down. Before
Euro-American settlement, chimney
swift communal roosts and solitary
nests were once in hollowed-out trees
of old growth riparian woodlands
and eastern hardwood forests. But
as America grew west and harvested
those trees for fuel, building materials
or cleared them for agriculture, the
swifts adapted quickly to using brick
chimneys built for our homes or
schools, and smoke stacks for industry.
But today, most of those old brick
chimneys in homes are being covered
or sealed, dilapidated buildings and
their smokestacks are being torn down,
old steam-generating heating and
cooling systems in public buildings like
schools and office buildings are being
retro-fitted or modernized, and now
the swifts' human-made habitats that
they were able to adapt to in the last
century are dwindling, and the birds
are struggling in some areas to survive.
That's the bad news.
The good news is, people and
communities that learn about these
swifts seem to care, and conservation
efforts for swifts are on the radar.
Cities like Austin, Texas, have
incorporated swift-friendly roosting
and nesting structures into their
The Irving chimney casts a shadow on the playground during a youth flag football game. This chimney and others in Lincoln serve
as important roost sites for chimney swifts, neo-tropical migrants that move between the Midwest and the Upper Amazon Basin.
