Aerial Effervescence

Swifts sighting at Chapman Elementary

What stands before me was once an entryway. Now, a thorny, overgrown thicket with gnarled branches reaches across the opening of a gated chain link fence. It seems a good representation of this year — closed off, canceled, or simply forgotten. But are centuries of natural phenomena bound to these fleeting human trends? 

Past the tangle of foliage and up a grassy, golden hill, another world emerges. Laughter and chatter ring in my ears as groups of eager sightseers are enjoying the last moments of the day’s light, lounging on picnic blankets and basking in the sun’s golden glow. It’s an eclectic mix of people: elderly couples, groups of young adults, children. The little ones dance around the schoolyard and seem to find unrivaled jubilation in the most simple pleasures, lugging sheets of cardboard larger than themselves up the hill, throwing their arms up, and sliding down.

The evening air is warm with a slight breeze, the prickly grass beneath my toes a constant reminder we are in nature’s embrace. The stage is set up perfectly, if there is to be a show. Onlookers around us buzz with anticipation, and questions float through the air. Is it too early this year? Will the swifts even come? My thoughts echo their words. Uncertainty has been the theme of the last couple months (years, even), and it is difficult to know what you can count on.

But among the inconsistencies and irregularities, the uncertainties and unpredictabilities, the Vaux’s swifts prove to be one of Portland’s few unwavering constants. As the sun kisses the horizon, transforming the sky to hues of blush and lilac and burnt orange, the first birds begin to gather in the sky. Initially, the handful of floating specks evoke thoughts of a couple sailors, lost at sea. And maybe ten seconds pass or maybe it’s ten minutes and then there are thousands and they are the sea, each bird a droplet in an all-encompassing tidal wave.

The form of this gathering of thousands truly seems more liquid than solid, a free-flowing matter whose movements are dictated by forces I cannot see. At a moment’s notice, a fleeting thought, the entire flock shifts directions, expanding to fill the sky then abruptly contracting, their movements fluid as if they are subject to their own laws of matter and motion. It is seeing a painting come to life before me and they are the brush and the medium, using airy strokes and swirls to paint the sky dark where it once shone periwinkle. Around me is a carefully constructed orchestra playing the score of pure elation — a symphony of thousands of chirps is joined with whoops and cheers from the audience, shrieks of delight from the children.

They swoop and dive toward the entrance as they pass, none entering — as if they are daring each other to be the first, as if they are playing a game of chicken. 

When the first does enter, though, the chain reaction it sets off is immediate. The flock begins to mobilize in a massive whorl, a spinning aerial display in the sky. At its base, the swifts condense into a tight spiral, a tornado, a natural disaster — no, phenomenon — one that is breathtaking to behold. The birds funnel into the chimney at rates of up to one hundred a second, yet the process does not stop, does not seem to slow as if there is an unlimited supply of tiny dancers in the sky.

I think if this were a different era, if I had not come to witness this very natural phenomenon, perhaps I would be met with an impending sense of doom, at this dark, churning cloud descending from the sky. Instead, I see vitality, continuity, and effervescent life in their form. 

These Vaux’s swifts have been migrating through Portland, finding temporary respite by infiltrating and roosting in this very chimney since the early 1980s. They have returned every year, without fail, but not without facing their fair share of obstacles. They returned in 2000, after Portland’s residents raised $60,000 to renovate the chimney and update the building’s heating system. They returned in 2003, when a seismic stabilization system was installed to maintain the landmark. They returned in the smoky summer of 2020, when the air was too thick to see and too hazardous to breathe. For me, the show tonight is a once-in-a-lifetime event to behold, but for the birds in this flock this will be every day: one stop, one night along their flight from Canada to Central America.

Their presence comforts me — knowing that despite it all, the birds will continue to come, the local community will continue to safely gather, and nature and its processes carry on. While our lives may have faced a momentary pause, the natural world is filled with reprise and renewal, and the swifts inaugurate this through the latest chapter of their annual passage South.

Words: Miranda Li

Photos: Niko Frost