Chimney Swifts - Decatur, TX
Posted by: 
WalksfarTX
N 33° 13.351 W 097° 35.187
14S E 631720 N 3676845
This fauna board is attached to a man made tower at the Wise County Heritage Museum.
Waymark Code: WM116G8
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 08/24/2019
Views: 2
Board Text:
Chimney Swift Tower Project 2005 Tallgrass Prairie Audubon Society
This tower was built to provide shelter and a nesting site for the Chimney Swift (Chaetura Pelagica), a bird known by many as a "cigar with wings" due to its stubby shape. The tower imitates the structure of a chimney, one of the preferred nesting sites of this species sometimes hundred and thousands of swifts will roost at one site during migration, but there will only be one nesting pair per structure.
Today, Chimney Swifts typically nest in chimneys or other man-made structures like this tower. Before chimneys, however, the swifts nested in large hollow trees and still occasionally do so. The swifts use their sticky saliva to glue twigs to the wall of the nest site, forming a half cup in which to lay their 4-5 white eggs.
The Chimney Swifts usually arrive in north-central Texas in early April and depart in early October. They can also be found all across eastern North America in the summer, and they spend the winter in Peru, Chile, and Brazil. The swift's diet includes mayflies, crane flies, beetles, wasps, ants, bees, moths, true bugs, and other flying insects.
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