Swallows and Swifts

Joe Meche is a member of the board of directors of the North Cascades Audubon Society and has been the editor of the chapter newsletter for the past six years. Joe has been photographing birds and landscapes for over thirty years and has been watching birds for more than fifty years.

Some of our most noticeable birds throughout the spring and summer, and sometimes into the fall, are the swallows. Less noticeable and often confused with swallows are the swifts. Though they are not related and belong to two separate families of birds, two obvious similarities that exist between swallows and swifts are the amount of time they spend on the wing, and the fact that their diets are made up primarily of flying insects.

Humans would be under a tremendous onslaught of flying insects were it not for the voracious appetites and aerobatic skills of swallows and swifts.

While swifts have been known to gather in flocks of a 1,000 or more birds, swallows travel together in smaller flocks. Since they both rely on flying insects for food, they travel by day and roost at night. Swifts are designed for spending most of their lives on the wing and are equipped with exceptionally long wings for that purpose. They have small legs and they cling to vertical surfaces with their tiny feet.

So attuned are swifts to life on the wing that they are believed to drink, bathe, and even copulate in the air. Swallows, also have small legs and feet, but unlike swifts are capable of perching like other members of the order Passeriformes.

Swallows and swifts are some of the most closely observed birds. They are long-distance migrants and their arrival dates at their traditional breeding grounds are usually right on schedule. The fabled swallows of Capistrano are the fiber of legend and song. Any delay in the arrival of our local tree swallows by Washington’s Birthday does not go unnoticed.

Other rule-of-thumb arrival dates locally are Saint Patrick’s Day for violet-green swallows, and April 15, or tax day, for barn swallows. Native Americans understood the cycle of the seasons and the benefit of swallows as natural insect control. They hollowed out gourds and hung them in clearings for the purple martins that returned in the spring.

Swallows typically nest near water or in open areas where food is readily available. Within the swallow family, there is a range of variation in the nests of individual species. Some swallows are excavators, while some build elaborate structures of mud, and others are cavity nesters, relying on woodpecker holes or man-made nesting boxes.

Aside from their value in the control of flying insects, swallows are always a joy to watch as they fly about exuberantly in pursuit of prey. Like other vocal birds, their sweet songs are always a welcome relief after a cold, wet winter.

Since the swallow and swift families consist of a small number of species, it’s easy enough to take a brief look at each of the species that breed in Whatcom County. The swallow species that are present in spring and summer in the county range from the rare bank swallow and purple martin, to the locally-common tree, violet-green, barn and cliff swallows. Less common but widespread are the northern rough-winged swallows.

Tree swallows are the one of the traditional first arrivals and tease us, along with crocuses, about the coming of spring. Tree swallows nest farther north than any other species of swallow and are susceptible to sudden cold snaps in the northern climes. As cavity nesters, however, they can cope with unexpected cold by roosting in old woodpecker holes and nesting boxes.

A unique trait of tree swallows is that they, unlike other swallows, will eat fruit when insects are scarce. Tree swallows winter as far south as northern South America and some have been known to winter in the warmer parts of the southern tier states.

Violet-green swallows, like tree swallows, are cavity nesters that have adapted to nesting boxes. A unique design for violet-green nest boxes includes a diamond-shaped opening that measures not more than seven-eights of an inch at the highest point of the diamond. This technique prevents house sparrows and starlings from using or raiding the boxes. As with most cavity nesters, violet-green swallows are adversely affected by the loss of habitat that includes standing dead trees.

Perhaps the most recognizable of the swallows are the barn swallows, which are also among the world’s most widespread bird species. The deeply-forked tail makes barn swallows so recognizable. The formal swallow-tailed coat derived its name from the tail of the barn swallow.

Even the swallow-tailed kite is named for its own deeply-forked tail which closely resembles that of the barn swallow. Barn swallows nest on ledges and construct their nests of twigs and straw, which are cemented together with mud, and lined with feathers.

Cliff swallows make gourd-shaped nests of mud and are quite gregarious. Good nesting sites near an abundant source of suitable mud will have hundreds of these elaborate nests. A pair of cliff swallows will make thousands of trips carrying mud to build their nests. These are the same swallows that have made the Mission San Juan Capistrano a popular destination for people who wait to see the swallows each spring as they arrive from their wintering grounds in Argentina.

Northern rough-winged and bank swallows are the excavators of the swallow family and dig holes in soft earth and sand banks to build their nests. They dig entry tunnels that lead to the actual nesting chamber at the rear of the tunnel. The rough-wings are usually solitary nesters while the bank swallows tend to be more colonial. A good riverbank provides a suitable nesting site for hundreds of bank swallows.

Purple martins are the largest members of the swallow family. Martins are cavity nesters and utilize elaborate man-made martin houses for their nests. Martin houses are considered works of art in some parts of the country. Historically, purple martins were frequent summer visitors to western Washington, but they’ve all but disappeared from Whatcom County. Sightings are often reported in the Vancouver and Seattle areas but only occasional sightings are reported locally.

When I was growing up, several neighbors had martin houses in their yards and the martins were sources of endless entertainment. I remember long summer evenings before television invaded our lives, when martins provided the entertainment until the fireflies came out.

Swifts belong to the family Apodidae, whose name derives from the Greek apodos, meaning without feet. This could be considered a misnomer, in that they do, in fact, have feet. With their weak legs and very small feet, swifts are not able to perch, but they certainly can cling to vertical surfaces. Since their legs are so weak, swifts must always roost in places where they can launch themselves into flight. If a swift alights on the ground, it might not be able to take off.

When they stop their daylong foraging flights and roost for the night, they seek chimneys and hollow trees. Swifts are longer-winged and fly faster than swallows. The swift family is represented in Whatcom County by the Vaux’s and black swifts.

Vaux’s swift is the western counterpart of the chimney swift of the eastern states. They are slightly smaller and a bit lighter colored underneath than the chimney swift but share the propensity to use chimneys as roosting sites.

The chimney on the old customs house in Sumas has long been a favorite roosting site for the Vaux’s swifts that return to Whatcom County in the spring. There was some concern years ago when the building was moved during the winter, but the swifts found it anyway, and continue to utilize the chimney in spring and fall.

The chimney serves as a staging site for dispersal to nesting areas in the foothills in spring; and then becomes a staging site for the southbound migration in the fall. No estimate has ever been made as to the numbers that roost in the chimney, but it is quite a spectacle when as many as a thousand Vaux’s swifts settle into the chimney at dusk.

The black swift is much larger than the Vaux’s and is a locally common summer visitor in the county. They tend to nest on cliffs and crags in isolated parts of the Cascades, but have been observed foraging in the lowlands, many miles from their nesting sites.

Black swifts are also known to nest behind waterfalls and in other inaccessible places, making observation and documentation very difficult. The best time to see them is during May and June on low-cloud or rainy days when they might be foraging in lowland valleys.

Swallows and swifts fly to live, and they live to fly. It’s been estimated that a European swift flies 560 miles a day during the nesting season, and that a banded chimney swift that lived for nine years was estimated to have flown 1,350,000 miles in its lifetime.

Swallows spend less time in the air, but like swifts are marvels of adaptive evolution. When fall comes around, look for telephone lines that appear almost to sag under the weight of swallows that are perched shoulder to shoulder, waiting for that signal to head south for the winter.

After the swallows are gone, it’s then that you’ll notice how quiet and empty the sky seems to be without them. Since there are just a few species in the swallow and swift families, it’s easy to get to know them and, in turn, appreciate them. §