Saturday afternoon Kris Baker and I drove from Ballard to the Chapman School in Portland, to see the reported roost of Vaux's swifts. By 6 pm there was a lively crowd of people (and dogs), but by 7:15 the light was dim and the crowd was thinning. An accipiter inspected the chimney a couple of times, but no swifts were seen. Later we heard from a Portland Audubon volunteer that the swifts hadn't been seen since Tuesday evening. Speculation was that hawk predation deterred the swifts to another local roost, or that the swifts simply moved on. I heard that the evening peak count was up to 5500 this season.

After a few shopping hours at a very large Portland book store, we drove back to Ballard.

Kevin Li
Ballard, USA
kdli at msn.com