Chimney Swift Cam in Glenham, NY

I’m not sure if my current readers are aware that I have chimney swifts that nest in my chimney every year. I blogged about them last summer, but that was before I was on wordpress.com. When I first bought this house, there was a screen covering the top of the chimney. However, like everything else in this house, the former owner hadn’t actually *attached* the cover to the chimney. He just set it up there and figured it would stay. He had the same theory with lots of things around here, and it’s a flawed theory.

Anyway, I had the chimney cleaned, and when the guy pushed the brush up the chimney, it knocked the screen off. By then, there was snow on the ground, and I’m not sure I would have decided to go up on the roof to put it back even if the roof were clear and dry. I didn’t know who to hire to do such things for me, either, so I just shrugged and hoped nothing got into my house.

That spring, I was incredibly alarmed when I heard high pitched twittering coming from the base of my chimney, just above the fireplace. The twittering was accompanied by frantic wingbeats. Oh no, I thought, a bird has fallen in there and can’t get out. I couldn’t figure out what to do about it, though, and I was going to miss my bus, so I left for work. When I got home, all was silent. I figured the bird had died. But then I heard the noise again a couple of days later. What the heck?

The mystery was solved when I was outside and saw a swift duck into the chimney. Wow, the twittering I had been hearing was the twittering of baby swifts! At that moment, I realized I couldn’t possibly put the screen back on the chimney ever. Chimney swifts are wonderful birds that eat insects like mosquitoes, and they certainly didn’t seem to be causing any problems for me.

That was eight years ago, and every year, I look forward to the return of the chimney swifts. I’ve always been curious about what’s going on inside my chimney, though, and there just isn’t a good way to see in without disturbing the birds. So last year, I started Googling around and found a web cam in Glenham, New York. The folks there had actually built a tower for their swifts–a large structure in their yard that mimicks a chimney. See, they were doing some work on their house involving the chimney, and they didn’t want to leave the birds homeless. When they put up the tower, they also installed a webcam so you can see the birds.

I just heard from them that the birds have returned to the area, although they have not yet entered the tower to start building the nest. I’m looking forward to watching them again this year, though, and wanted to let my readers know about the cam, which you can find here.

I took some screen captures from last year’s nest, if you’d like to see them here.

If you are interested in other posts that I made about my swifts, and my fear last year that rebuilding my chimney killed the babies, just use the search feature on my blog and put in “chimney swifts.” Fortunately, my birds were just fine, in spite of the construction, thanks to a wonderfully thoughtful chimney builder. I’m looking forward to the return of my birds this year, as well as the opportunity to watch the nest in Glenham!