Tonight I arrived at Wagner Elementary School at 7:30 PM. The weather was
partly sunny. Small groups of swifts were circling over the chimney and
flying away. A raptor of some sort flew slowly across the sky, during which
time no swifts were to be seen. After that the number of swifts circling
steadily increased to the point where they looked like a mosquito cloud over
the chimney. At about 18 minutes before 8PM the swifts began to descend
into the flue at a rate of 8-10 per second. This was steady for about 8
minutes after which the flow tapered off to an occasional swift. During
the maximum rate some swifts had to peel off, circle and try again because
of the traffic jam at the top of the flue. A conservative estimate is that
3,000 swifts entered the chimney. It was about 60 degrees F when the last
swifts went in.



I took multiple photos of the stream of swifts going in to the flue, in case
anyone is interested.



Marvin S. Hoekstra

Sammamish, WA

marvin dot hoekstra at verizon dot net