Happy first week of fall!
We’re finally back with our last monitoring recap. We left off last time with the happenings of Sept 10, when Dennis and Patti were hoping to see signs of fledglings but saw only 2 entries during the roosting hour before having to wrap up early due to some Fire Department training.
Dennis and Patti returned on Sept 11. They monitored from 7:05pm-8:20pm, and saw 1 entry at 7:18pm and 1 entry at 7:27pm. The next day, on Friday Sept 12, Dennis and Patti monitored from 6:58pm-8:17pm. They noted that there was a goose sitting on the chimney from about 7:00pm-7:30pm. They saw zero swifts…
On Saturday morning (Sept 13), Patti spent about an hour chimney-side and did not see any swifts. She returned later that evening and again saw no activity during the half hour she was there.
On Sunday (Sept 14), Patti monitored from 7:00pm-8:13pm and again saw no activity, confirming that they must really be gone for good (until next spring, of course).
Huh – what an interesting and mysterious end to the Infirmary swift saga. Thanks again to Patti and Dennis for their many hours of September monitoring!!!
It’s tough to say if the chicks did successfully fledge and depart very quickly afterwards, or if somewhere along the way the late attempt failed. Now that the swifts are gone, we will be able to check out the chimney clean-out trap for more clues. The contents of the chimney clean-out trap (egg fragments, nests, etc) will provide very important information on what truly went down. I hope to post a summary of the clean-out findings on the blog, so stay tuned for that.
So, that’s officially a wrap on our 2025 Chimney Swift monitoring season! Thank you SO much to all of you incredible volunteers. It’s hard to put into words how much your participation and support mean to this program.
We’re in the process of entering and verifying all the monitoring data from the season. Once we’ve got that information ready, we will post the season summary on the blog.
Thanks again for being here!
Cheers,
Marissa
