I was working in my home office in Decatur one day last week when my wife, Laura, yelled to me from downstairs: “There’s a bird in the house.” I caught the bird, an adult chimney swift, in our dining room and released it from the front porch.
For the past 30 summers or so, chimney swifts have nested in our brick chimney. On a few occasions, an adult bird has gotten into the house via the fireplace in the den, even though we try to take precautions — such as closing the chimney flue — to prevent it.
But somehow last week, the bird still got into our house — and this episode would be more dramatic: After releasing the adult, we discovered that two fledgling swifts also had gotten into the house through the fireplace. One of the baby swifts appeared healthy, but its sibling was barely alive.
The adult bird apparently had followed its babies from the chimney into the house. I am well aware of advice that if you find a fledgling out of its nest, leave it alone because the parents probably will continue to feed it. But with the baby swifts now inside our house, that seemed impractical.
I thought about taking the fledglings outside and leaving them on a tree limb, but the chances of their survival seemed slim.
That left me, I felt, with no other choice: Take them to the folks at Wild Nest Bird Rehab in Decatur to see if they could help the babies. The center, in fact, has a special contraption to hold sick, injured or orphaned chimney swifts while caring tor them.
“We’re caring for a dozen chimney swifts right now,” Wild Nest founder Nancy Eilen told me. The center cares for hundreds of other songbirds from a variety of species each year.
The sick fledgling from our chimney, unfortunately, died, but its sibling is doing well and will be released soon. Chimney swifts, which will migrate soon to South America, are “species of concern” because of population declines from habitat loss and decreasing insect numbers.
IN THE SKY: From David Dundee, retired Tellus Science Museum astronomer: The South Delta Aquarid meteor shower will peak on Monday night at about 15 meteors per hour — in the southeast after dark. The moon will be first quarter on Friday. Mercury and Mars (near the moon on Monday) are low in the west just after dark. Venus is in the east a few hours before dawn. Saturn rises in the east around midnight.
Charles Seabrook can be reached at charles.seabrook@yahoo.com.
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