Don Torino: On Ridgewood's Chimney Swifts
September 18, 2012
Our friend Don Torino's latest column for the wildnewjersey.tv blog is about Ridgewood's Chimney Swifts.
Here's the opening: "Like a day at Hogwarts, more than a thousand strangely shaped birds gather in the sky at dusk. Never stopping to perch or rest, they soon begin to form an almost mystical circle in the air around a large old chimney atop a children’s school.
"As if given some kind of magical signal, they
begin to drop into the chimney. 450 a minute descend into the dark
vertical tunnel for the evening. This continues until as many as 2,000
birds vanish for the night into the depths of an unseen place, a scene
that would make Harry Potter gaze in amazement. But this is no fantasy.
This is real life - an amazing story of survival that repeats itself
every September at George Washington Middle School in Ridgewood.
"Swifts
are amazing creatures. They are highly urbanized birds that can eat
about 1/3 of their weight every day in insects, which could mean about a
thousand mosquitos. They hunt for bugs in close flying flocks. You can
hear their high-pitched chipping call long before you ever see them."
The rest of Don's column is here. (That's Don on the left in the photo above, and Swift advocate/expert Kurt Muenz on the right; photo by Mike Malzone.)