An Essay on the End of the Swift Season

Chimney at Mount Emerald.

By James Ed. Ducey

As a mere acolyte of swiftian studies, discoveries of their habits are due to travels by various sorts about downtown streets and alleys, historic market sections, neighborhoods of different sorts and other built environments.

An outing meant eyes to the skies to purvey the aerial coursers flashing in the ethereal realm. There has been a diverse watch as black bugeaters descend into a chosen chimney with a wide variety of architecture at business buildings, churches, schools, residences and warehouses. Only older structures are any interest since nearly all modern architecture doesn't provide a useful chimney.

A last bicycle ride of the present years' season was a survey at Mount Emerald. The dark coursers of the sunlit skies did flit and twitter in a diminutive place beneath the perfect azure of the worldly dome.

Settling residents created this place with unknown swift haunts on a higher elevation in the salt basin. Habitats for many generations of swift clans are subtly decorative and splendid places where each generation has its fragile yet distinct origins.

The Mount, and adjacent Hillsdale, are a housing jumble on the stolid ground. Structures of various sorts dominate among the concrete grid of streets Great arboreal splendors provide insect swarming from hidden beginnings, their fate to provide a steady source of sustenance for the bug eating birds awing on the constant and unseen air currents of urbane skies.

Near the top of Mount Emerald, a great chimney to mark the place for celebratory gatherings. It is brick and stone solid, and finely decorated with symbolic effigies. The great eagle of the skies is a most dramatic aspect. Common pigeons watch the place, and sit about its crest.

Smaller brick abodes of the local homes had provided a number of shelters for a dedicated pair of nesters. The variety of chimneys offer a bunch of distinct features best known from the aerial, bird's-eye view. The swifts nurture another generation during the endless cycle of seasons.

Ignorant heathens readily exclude with screen or other covers, entry of the little black birds into suitable haunts, limiting the number of pairs that could get together in the magical bonding of their ongoing nature.

Suitable respect to the benefits and glory of the daily swift antics is extended in just a limited and unknowing manner. One sturdy stone turret lets the common folk watch - with a cool glass of lemonade - the movements of the birds above eating bugs of several sorts pesky to the people below. The residents don't express any means of deserved appreciation.

Bell tower at Mount Emerald. All photos by the author.

Majestic in design and stature, a solid bell tower marked with symbols, musically joins with the great antics of aerial flight. Tolling in the winds of the saline flats, the chimes convey the swifts way each day as they go about their tasks.

Bugs hovering over the tree lofts are easily the usual meal readily captured. Another gets taken. Then another insect is gone, a thousand times each day for the first, real bugeaters of this community.

Seasons of the swift are regular and consistent. Eggs appear in a fragile stick nest. Nourished young take flight to course through air currents in a learned mastery of the flight essential as flocks gather when warmer weeks wane.

In a season's finale on a muggy eve of early October, a lesser bunch of swifts gather together. With the sun gone away in the west, the small flock of migratory birds flit through the treetops. Which single chimney will demark a 2007 finale and provide a warm, shared shelter for a long night.

No obvious spot is shown by elegant swoops and swirls from the last of the swifts. No place is easily apparent as when many hundreds of birds use the father of all chimneys elsewhere in the star city. There was no great bunch giving a phantasmagoric display about the large entry to a expansive chimney - perhaps the mother of all chimneys - as found in the river city along the Missouri.

Around the blocks went the survey cycle. No roost was obvious as dusk darkened the scene. Then a few swifts were heard as they circled about a leafy tree and small chimney covered with peeling white paint. Each little black bird there quietly dropped into the nights spot. Their numbers were counted as they gathered in the home's warm shelter. Then all was quiet on Mount Emerald.

As the chills of the night spread, there are fewer edible insects. In a few shorter days, the little black swifts depart on the expected retreat to warmer, southerly spaces.

The swift cycle will begin again next spring, after a few harsh months, when there are no masters of the skies about. Without the flitting twitter of the aerial acrobats, it is a lesser time for enthusiasts of the grandeur of the Chimney Swift, wherever it may happen.

Swift skies as seen from the heights of Carriage Park, Lincoln.