Nature Done Wright

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.)