The Birds Are Back!

One of Jacksonville’s truly amazing natural phenomena is now taking place in our neighborhood, and we thought you might enjoy seeing it (and spread the word).

Every year, thousands of chimney swifts migrate through Jacksonville on their way to Central America and Peru. Their annual flight path brings these birds back to the exact same place in large numbers, and for over a decade they have been roosting in the chimney of the Riverside Avenue Christian Church on the corner of Riverside and Cherry Streets.

This has been happening for years with the largest showing of these birds is usually in October. Each night at sunset (a little after 7:00 p.m. this week) the sky begins to fill with hundreds of the little birds, scattered over a few miles in all directions at first. Slowly, the birds coalesce into a swirling cloud. This vortex of birds moves faster and faster until they suddenly begin to shoot down the chimney at incredible speed, as many as 10 birds a second plummeting down the shaft.

In 20 minutes, the spectacle is over. The birds spend the night down in the unused chimney, and emerge the next morning at dawn to spend their entire day in flight, eating Jacksonville’s bugs, and they return to the chimney at night to complete the cycle.

In recent years, the greatest number of birds has been observed back in 2002, when there were thousands and thousands of them by the third week in October. By the first day in November they were totally gone.

Last year there were almost none at all. This year for the last several nights there have been hundreds and hundreds - enough to put on quite a display. There is no telling if the numbers will increase over the next few weeks, or if they will be gone by tomorrow night.

But they will be leaving soon, so you might want to see them while they are here.

I invite you to join Dr. Wayne Wood and others this Sunday night a little after 7:00 p.m. to watch this phenomenal display from the church parking lot.

You can read more about chimney swifts at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimney_Swift


Thank you to Dr. Wood for sharing with us.