ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
A visit by a famous swift has sent Portland, Ore., into a frenzy. We're not talking about Taylor Swift, but the Vaux's swift. It's a tiny bird. Some people call it a cigar with wings. Every fall, these little birds make a big trip. They fly from their summer breeding grounds in the Pacific Northwest down to their winter home in Central and South America. Along the way, many of them roost in chimneys, and thousands of people gather to watch. From Portland, Deena Prichep reports on Swift Watch 2024.
DEENA PRICHEP, BYLINE: It is hard to overstate how delightful the scene is at Chapman Elementary School. There are about 1,500 people on blankets and lawn chairs sharing takeout and potluck picnics. Kids are sliding down the hill on sheets of cardboard, and everyone's here for the same reason, including Mike Dinsdale.
MIKE DINSDALE: To see thousands, multiple thousands of birds funnel into a chimney? Are you kidding me? What more do you need?
SHERIL KLINE: It's just like the weirdest Portland thing ever. And I love the community and all the group that comes out.
PRICHEP: Sheril Kline is one of five people we came across celebrating a birthday tonight. But really, everyone seems to be having a party. For lack of a better term, the vibes here are great. People are running into friends, sharing pizza with strangers. As 9-year-old Bella Rosenthal puts it...
BELLA ROSENTHAL: It just feels very cool and weird at the same time.
PRICHEP: About an hour before sunset, the birds start to appear and then coalesce in a swirling flock called a murmuration. Historically, these birds would roost in hollow trees, but they've developed a preference for brick and stone chimneys.
LARRY SCHWITTERS: The thing about chimneys is they soak up the heat of the day.
PRICHEP: Larry Schwitters is a retired science teacher in Washington state. He runs a website called VauxHappening, where bird groups and citizen scientists report swift counts from chimneys up and down the West Coast. Altogether, it's tens of thousands of birds roosting at about a dozen major sites.
SCHWITTERS: The swifts are not good at insulating themselves, so they press themselves against the bricks that are releasing heat.
PRICHEP: During the summer, the swifts sleep in their own nests, but during the fall migration, they form flocks of thousands and huddle up in chimneys to share body heat. Joe Liebezeit is the assistant conservation director at Bird Alliance of Oregon. He says these big groups stop at each spot for a couple of nights, spending their days filling up on bugs.
JOE LIEBEZEIT: They're gathering energy. They're gathering fat stores on their body because they have to migrate hundreds of miles to the next stopover point.
PRICHEP: Like a lot of urban nature, it's not always a seamless relationship. Some of the old smoke stacks have been torn down because of development. Sometimes people don't want to deal with the birds' poop. But Liebezeit says that human-animal dance is what makes it so special.
LIEBEZEIT: It's a great connection between people all gathered together on a lawn, and then this flock of birds that are all kind of in synchronicity flying in a murmuration, in a tornado going down into the chimney.
PRICHEP: At Portland's Chapman Elementary School, you can see the connection. On this particular night, there's a juvenile Cooper's hawk perching on the chimney, trying to pick off a few swifts as they funnel in. And the crowd is not on Team Hawk.
(BOOING)
PRICHEP: As the sun sets, the cloud of a couple thousand Vaux's swifts circles and closer to the chimney. And then, in what seems like a magic trick, they all funnel inside. It's what everyone's been waiting for.
(CHEERING)
PRICHEP: The last of the birds disappear into the chimney, and it's hard to imagine a better way to spend a September night.
For NPR News, I'm Deena Prichep in Portland, Ore. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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