Have you noticed a little construction going on in our back parking lot at Wild Bird Rehabilitation. Thanks to a grant from the Boeing Employee Community Fund and the work of one of our members, E.F. Porter this will soon be a new home for visiting Chimney Swifts where they can nest and roost.

The Chimney Swift tower will also have an area to display information about these fascinating birds. Not only do they eat more than 1,000 mosquitoes and other insects a day, they are first-rate world travelers. Each spring they come from areas of Peru, Brazil and Chile to the skies of North America. Except when roosting at night and raising their young their life takes place in the skies. They are often referred to as the “Children of the Sky”. Chimney Swifts at one time nested in old growth trees that were hollow. As these disappeared they moved into the chimneys which became more and more plentiful as humans moved throughout the country. Now however, chimneys are often lined with metal and capped at the top, so the swifts are losing their nesting areas.

This tower will be an effort to add a new nesting site. If all goes well we will have a camera inside the tower to watch the nesting process. With a monitor inside the center visitors and volunteers can keep an eye on any resident swifts. We will try and get this on the web site also. It should be a pretty exciting reality show.

If you’d like to build a tower in your own backyard, we have information available at the center, or you can go to www.chimneyswifts.org.