The Swifts

A couple days ago I watched a strange natural phenomenon. A group of small birds called swifts have made a home in a school chimney in Northwest Portland, and for some reason the many thousands of them swirl around it every night in September. For an hour or so the sky is filled with birds, as well as birds of prey looking for an easy meal. Then the swifts funnel themselves in an orderly manner back into the chimney, a process that takes a good 20 minutes to clear the sky of birds. It was quite a strange experience and very hard to describe, so I've included this YouTube video:




I'm writing this between commercials in the Tiger's/Yankees game. Go Tigers!