The Vaux's Swifts are back this year at the Courtenay Museum

 by Keith and Heather Nicol

On Tuesday April 30  we headed down to a parking lot behind the Courtenay Museum to see if the Vaux’s Swifts that are in the area might fly down the chimney to roost for the evening. Evidently they have been seen coming to this chimney for the last few years in late April and early May but we had not checked out the action for this year. On this night we saw about 30 other people with their binoculars and cameras waiting and watching the for the swifts to gather their numbers and fly into the chimney.   The Vaux’s Swifts spend the winter in Mexico and breed in large hollow trees found in old growth forests in BC, Washington and Oregon. Because of this their numbers are in decline as logging removes their breeding habitat. 

 The birds feed on insects and their shape has been described as cigars with wings.  We arrived just before 8:00 pm armed with binoculars and a camera with a telephoto lens.  The birds arrival to the chimney seems to depend on the weather and so you don’t know when they might arrive but it usually anywhere from 7:30 pm to sunset. No sooner did we get there and we saw began to see a swarm of Vaux’s Swifts swoop over head and fly over the chimney. They then disappeared for a few minutes only to return again for another fly over. They do this arriving and departing routine repeatedly each time it seems that they gather a few more birds. Then on this night about 8:45 pm they began to spiral around and just like Santa they headed down the chimney. Presumably they like the rough interior of the chimney and spend the night huddled together along the edges of the chimney. It is hard to get an exact count of the numbers of birds that headed down the chimney on this night but it was likely between 400 and 500 birds !! How they all fit is anyone’s guess. Also below is a video shot a few years ago and it is an impressive sight if you have not seen it. Check it out !!