>Dennis,
>
>How recently has the Vaux' swift use of chimneys been taking place?
>
>My family's place - near Ankeny Hill exit off I-5 near Jefferson, Oregon
>- was built in 1855. Family lore has it that the "Chimney Swifts" moved
>in the following year, and my Dad reports that there are swifts going
>into the chimneys again this year.

Jon, I thought chimney nesting was a relatively recent thing--within the
past several decades--until I recently looked in Bent's Life Histories,
where he cited chimney nesting in the Seattle area back toward the turn of
the century. It certainly is spotty, and Vaux's is hardly a fixture of
cities as Chimney Swifts are in the East, but I guess it's widespread.
I've seen small groups of them over small towns around the Blue Mountains
and over into Idaho and Montana, even towns out in the prairie far from
what we would consider "normal" Vaux's nesting habitat. That's what first
brought chimney-nesting to my attention.

Having seen these birds over small towns repeatedly, as well as scattered
around Seattle, I can't get too worked up over some of the "special-status"
designations for this species and the insistence that it's one of the
species restricted to (at least "strongly associated with") old-growth
forests. Of course they are in old-growth forests; they're in any sort of
forest in which there are snags large enough to provide nest sites (by no
means limited to old growth), as well, of course, as in cities.

Dennis Paulson, Director phone: (206) 756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax: (206) 756-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail: dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416