Eric took great photos of both nests. The active one had an adult
sitting on a very young chick. The "dead" bird is indeed very dead
and doesn't hardly look like a bird.

Larry Schwitters
Issaquah
On Aug 25, 2012, at 4:04 PM, Larry Schwitters wrote:

>
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
>> From: dave templeton <crazydave65 at gmail.com>
>> Date: August 25, 2012 3:14:49 PM PDT
>> To: Tweeters <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
>> Subject: [Tweeters] old post re: black swift
>>
>> hi all:
>>
>> i dug back through the old messages and found this one regarding
>> black swifts:
>>
>> Eric Horvath from Oregon has photographed an active Black Swift nest
>>
>> at Ketcham Falls in the North Cascades and another with a dead chick
>>
>> in it upstream from Emerald Pool Falls.
>>
>>
>> i recall thinking at the time how sad it was that such a rare chick
>> was found dead.
>>
>> now i wonder whether the bird was, in fact, dead. accdg to the
>> literature, swift chicks in general, and black swifts in
>> particular, go into cold torpor when the parents are gone and can
>> live up to ten days w/o food. it might have been that horvath
>> found a torpid chick rather than a dead one. i recall in a prior
>> century helping out on some mammal population studies (mostly deer
>> mice). we'd set box traps in the evening and come back in the
>> morning to mark and release the animals to see who we'd catch at a
>> later time. many of the rodents appeared dead as a stone, but if
>> you put one in your pocket, eventually the 'dead' critter would be
>> resurrected. at that point one faced the task of getting an irate
>> animal w/ sharp teeth (kangaroo rats fall directly into this
>> category) out of a pocket without harm to the capturee or the
>> capturor. some of the dances attendant to such activities were
>> quite amusing.
>>
>> thus, it seems apropos to mention to those who might see an
>> apparently dead swift chick, probably best to leave it alone as it
>> may not be dead at all.
>>
>> regards,
>>
>> t
>> --
>> dave templeton
>> fall city, wa
>>
>> crazydave65atgmaildaughtcom
>>
>> "Don't worry about the world coming to an end today; it's already
>> tomorrow in Australia." Charles Schultz
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>