Week 3- Won't stop , can't stop - The Chimney Swift

 

I awoke on Monday to a dark blue sky and about 7 bird silhouettes circling by the backyard.  They never stopped, making it near impossible for me to get a good look at this species and identify it. Their bodies were slick and the flight constant. Come to find out, the Chimney Swift rarely stops. In fact, they are incapable of perching.  They cannot perch. How sad. They feed by the wing, I think that is how birders say it, and they are only capable of clinging to the side of a structure, whereby they got their name because apparently, chimneys are a comfortable place to cling to if you cannot perch. More fascinating than being unable to perch is their propensity to literally destroy a home.  Chimney swifts travel in large groups. Like hundreds upon hundreds. When disturbed while sleeping their brood flaps their wings and it will sound like thunder. So with this image in mind, imagine if these birds find a chimney they can get in and a place down below to escape the elements? They will take it. In a regular town in America, this happened to a house. A woman woke up to literally hundreds of chimney swifts in her living room.  Alfred Hitchcock knew a thing or two. The birds destroyed her living room, and it took three whole weeks to get them all out. Three weeks! That is not cool and I'm not sure I would be writing or caring about birds at all if this happened in my living room.  

On the other hand, the beautiful thing about a chimney swift is its movement. It is graceful and productive. They feed by the wing. The human equivalent, I guess is fast food, but that is a real long shot. 

What does it feel like to wake up and start moving? Plus they are hardly ever alone. They sleep in giant groups. They feel protected, part of a bigger picture, and probably never isolated. 

I have always thought living in a sort of communal community would be ideal for me personally. I would love to eat dinner with a large group of close friends every day, share chores with them, and sleep knowing a bunch of people who care about me are near. This is one reason I am fascinated by Indian culture. 

I think the lesson here is this;  too much of anything with an agenda can really screw up the peace if the agenda is counter to that of the place in which they chose to inhabit. 

I will just end there and we can chew on that. 

love,

the birds and me 


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