At the Fabric Warehouse at 104 Washington St. you can see an old
abandoned factory in Auburn with the smoke stack chimney still
standing. On Saturday evening around 7:45 we watched in the pouring
rain for 45 minutes while 400 chimney swifts dove, wheeled, dispersed,
gathered, buzzed the chimney top, twittered like mad to each other,
hawked bugs, and fluttered. Finally, on some unknown signal, they
formed a black vortex moving in a counter-clockwise direction and
funneled into the chimney all at once like falling leaves in a wind
storm in about 15 seconds. Show over.
On Sunday Cindy Elias reported:
Clear skies; temps in 50's, low 60's.
Arrived 7:35 - no swifts in sight.
7:45 - first one shows up, then 2-3. Flying over Fabric Store, trees, but not over chimney.
8:00 - 6-10 birds
8:10 - 12- 15 birds ( no organized flight over chimney yet )
8:15 - 30- 40 birds
8: 16 - 60+ birds and beginning to circle over chimney ( ? a critical # needed to start the circling)
8:20 - 100+ birds...........and within a minute or so increases to several 100
With binocs I saw 2 small groups ( 10-20 ) go into chimney between 8:20 and 8:29.
8:29 - the remaining huge group goes in pretty much at once - perhaps 1-2 stragglers but by 8:30 the sky was empty.
Tom and Susan Hayward
Lewiston
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