Vaux’s Swifts in Rainier

I posted about the Chapman School swifts in 2007 and again in 2015. I never posted about the swifts in Rainier though, because I did not know they existed until a special news story the middle of September, 2023. And since the event usually ends about the time September does, I knew I had to see them right away. Pedro and I made plans to head out there the very next weekend, with the kids.

They were 18 (twins) then, and I worried that it might be the right age for them to just roll their eyes at something boring and dumb. But I was wrong! Pedro has the best boys. We talked and laughed quietly, were often silent, and the boys were absolutely content and interested to watch the swifts in their evening ritual. It made my heart so happy.

Ok, so let’s talk about what the birds are doing! Vaux’s swifts like to cling to the sides of things at night when it’s time to sleep. Their bodies are not designed for perching. Historically, they sought out hollow tree trunks in old growth forests or those burnt out by fire, I imagine. Those tree trunks are becoming quite rare in the 21st century, and abandoned chimneys are a good substitute if they are old and crumbly and preferably made of bricks with lots of good spots to hold.

I posted a video on TikTok, and since the Chapman School swifts are SO famous, I immediately had know-it-alls challenging me. “You mean the Chapman School, not Rainier,” they said. Nope. I can tell the difference. Once cool thing about the Rainier site is that – as you see in the photo above – you can watch the mighty Columbia River as you wait, and marvel at the enormous cargo ships that have come in from Japan to unload lumber and take on a new load of logs. Another cool thing is that the swifts really love it here. One night, bird observers counted 25,000 swifts. Imagine how crowded (but warm!) the inside of that chimney must be.

The best thing about the Rainier site compared to the Portland site in my opinion, is the numbers of people. On a typical night at Chapman School, Portland will host 2,000 people on the sloped lawn above the school. It’s a clear view of the chimney in a quiet, safe neighborhood. Children and grandparents and everyone in between show up and it’s really a beautiful thing. But so. many. people.

Last year, when we went to the Rainier site – granted it was late in the season – but there were about 18 people total, including our family of 4.

Swifts are excellent fliers, and spend their days soaring for miles, eating up all the delicious buggies they can get. When it starts to get dark, they reign in their circles, keeping an eye on the chimney as their probable nighttime spot. The darker it gets, the closer they fly. Thousands of birds build a bird tornado that begins in a wide slow turn, and tightens and quickens as darkness prevails.

This particular chimney belongs to the Riverside Community Church. In the 1970s and 80s, people were sad that swifts kept flying into the chimney on cold winter nights when the furnace was going to keep the building warm. The birds would die. No one thought outside the box and asked the community if they would be willing to be cold for one month before the fires were lit. Instead, in 1992, they installed a metal grate over the top, to protect the birds by keeping them out.

Many years later, after the chimney was no longer in use, a local person remembered that swifts used to try to use the chimney, and approached the pastor of the church about removing the grate. They did some research and decided that was a good idea. In 2019, the swifts found the chimney! It immediately became an annual stopover place during their migration to Central America.

The best views of all are when it’s so dark you almost can’t tell what’s going on. Human eyes are great for this, and it’s really a phenomenal show. But I don’t have a camera that shows it very well in the dark. Still, what I have here is enough for you to get the idea, since I was able to lighten the images with photo software.

Though the audience stayed quiet that night, the electricity of excitement was palpable. I just learned that a group of swifts is called a scream, I guess because of the noise swifts make. I think it’s a charming squeeky chirp, rather than a scream. I did not notice an audible cue when things changed. But someone noticed the scene had changed, then everyone noticed. It seemed like we all whispered to ourselves, “There they go!” Conversations cut off mid-sentence, people who had been scrolling on their phones looked up, kids who had been running around and playing came back over to their empty seats beside their parents.

If you’ve ever raised chickens, they can hover around their nighttime roosting area at dusk. It seems like each hen is waiting for another hen to make the first move. They hover in a bird cloud and pretend to be very interested in scratching the dirt, but really they are waiting for someone else to go first. Finally, one bird says, “Dang it, I’m tired!” and she goes to bed. And immediately the whole hen cloud queues to go to bed with her. At least that’s what it is like at my house.

The swifts do something similar. They fly in circles in their bird tornado as it gets darker and darker. They dart around at imagined insects (I mean, how many insects are really in among 10,00 birds?), and slowly tighten the rotation above the chimney. Then, suddenly, whoosh! Someone finds the GO button, and the birds pour inside like feathery liquid.

The swifts spiral down toward the opening and 50 or so make a dive, but not all of them fit at once, so they soar up and join the tornado again, waiting for the next time they come around and dive once again. The bird tornado spins the entire time above the chimney, while at the bottom of the funnel, a constant stream of birds pours into the chimney. It takes some time to get them all inside. It is an absolutely marvelous and fascinating natural show. Every single person seemed awed at some level.

Everyone sat until it was too dark to see anymore, and nearly all of the birds were inside the chimney. Then we carefully packed up our chairs in the dark. People had pulled on sweaters and hats in the chill. Voices got a little louder, there were some laughs, a dog barked.

We asked the kids on the way home if they had enjoyed it. They had. We are going to go again this year. It has to be soon! Swift season is September only.