As regular CFZ-watchers will know, for some time Corinna has been doing a column for Animals & Men and a regular segment on On The Track... particularly about out-of-place birds and rare vagrants. There seem to be more and more bird stories from all over the world hitting the news these days so, to make room for them all - and to give them all equal and worthy coverage - she has set up this new blog to cover all things feathery and Fortean.

Sunday, 16 September 2012

Thousands of birds stop in Northern State smokestack on migration

Photo: Wikipedia

That dark cloud pouring from a smokestack at the Northern State Hospital site isn't smoke — it's birds.

Vaux's Swifts, a small species of bird, gather in the 120-foot smokestack every year around September on their way south for the winter. More than 200,000 of them were counted there last year.

This means the former mental-hospital campus could be the most significant roost site in the birds' entire 2011 migration, according to Vaux Happening, an Audubon Society and community science project that tries to find Vaux's Swift roosts in North America.

Continued:
  http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2019160960_swifts15m.html

More Vaux's swift information:

No comments:

Post a Comment