Chimney Swifts are back!

Chimney Swift CC jim_mcculloch

While enjoying one of our favorite outdoor restaurants Amy noticed two birds flying high in circles.  She gets the award for seeing the first Chimney Swifts of the year!  I have always enjoyed watching Chimney Swifts twitter and flick around the sky over our city and anxiously awaited their return.  They are always entertaining on a warm spring evening.

Chimney Swifts don't perch like other birds rather they cling to a vertical wall.  In fact it is rare to see them sitting still.  They only land to nest or roost at night, the rest of the time they are busy sailing through the air catching bugs.  They even bath on the wing! Chimney Swifts are important because they reveal a slightly different side of the citied wilderness equation.

Human presence in a once wild land changes things.  From a conservationist point of view the changes are, more often than not, negative.  The Chimney Swift is a noted exception.  As cities grew and more chimney's were built Chimney Swifts adapted to use the newly available habitat and their population increased from pre-settlement times.  As we began to do away with chimney's or started capping or narrowing them we have negatively impacted their population by limiting or eliminating their nesting sites.

Currently their population is in decline. Yet there are efforts underway to reverse that decline by building Chimney Swift towers.  These towers are about 12 feet high and mimic a chimney.  One pair of Swifts can nest in each tower and raise as many as 5 babies each summer.  The opening images of the video in the post on the An Urban Nature Oasis is that of a Chimney Swift tower located outside the Center.  The more towers that are built the more swifts we get and the more bugs they eat.  Certainly sounds good to me!

This points us to an important lesson.  Our impact on the wild doesn't have to be negative.  It can be positive. We can build cities that allow for the wild to share our habitat

Tales of the Citied Wilderness

I'm continually reminded that the wild has been here longer than we have been here.

On Sunday afternoon Amy and I were having lunch at a local Mediterranean restaurant.  We were sitting outside and enjoying the unseasonably warm weather when I noticed a commotion in a nearby tree.  There were two crows making an awful racket.  Usually the rackets in that part of town are the evening revelers having a good time down at the local bar.

At first I couldn't quite see what the crows were upset about.  Then I noticed a huddled figure along one of the branches and assumed it was a Red-tailed hawk.  After an extended time in which the two crows were joined by two others to take up their harangue of the intruder the bird took off, revealing that instead of a hawk it was a Barred Owl.

Barred Owl being mobbed by Amy Petersen

The flight of the owl quickly took it out of our sight and earshot with the four crows following close behind.  Throughout the rest of the meal I found myself look up into the tree and thinking of the owl.  Why it had been in such a visible location? What was it doing now? Why it was there in the first place?

There is a grace given us each time we encounter the wild.  I long for its touch each day.

Random Acts of Wildness

At the heart of enjoying nature is a readiness to see the unexpected, the random.  As we were speeding down the highway on our way home from the hospital on Friday we saw an accipiter hawk eight feet from our car, probably a male Cooper's Hawk or maybe a Sharp-Shinned hawk.  It was diving and jerking towards the grassy shoulder in a strong wind, hunting for its dinner.

There is something sacred about these encounters.  They are certainly unexpected and undeserved.  They leave me with a sense of joy, of wonder and a kind of satisfaction.  They are frequent enough to keep me going.  I settle in and keep myself aware, watching, waiting.

A few years ago I remember driving the 2 hour drive to Squaw Creek National Wildlife Refuge one winter's day to see eagles.  Upon my return later that day I watched an eagle flying along Missouri River near Downtown, Kansas City.  I was in awe. I didn't have to go so far to see eagles, I just had to be patient.

I am constantly surprised by the citied wilderness I live in.  Last fall I watched flight after flight of common nighthawks soaring southward over my apartment.  Or, the time several years ago that an exuberant flock of cedar waxwings visited a cherry tree near my apartment in late winter, picking it clean on their way north.

I am blessed by these visitations.  They are epiphanies of the persistence of life, of the cycle of all things.