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Storytellers podcast showcasing the voices of Our State writers. Each podcast episode features a writer reading their column aloud, allowing each distinct voice to shine. Click below to listen to Eleanor read her column aloud.
Chimney swifts are built from a net of impossibilities, filled with the stuffing of the incredible. The bomber jet-shaped birds and their swift cousins bear the scientific name Apodidae, or “without feet.” They do have feet, but with claws held close enough to their bodies to render hopping, walking, and perching on branches or bird feeders impossible. Their toes can only cling to vertical surfaces, like the walls of the chimneys where they nest and sleep. Swifts roost as colonies, sometimes thousands of birds, coating chimney walls like living scales. They can cling but not land to rest, so in the day, they fly.
“Chimney swifts are like fish,” says John Connors, an ornithologist and past president of the Wake Audubon Society. “The air is like water, just thinner. They stay in the sky and are comfortable there.”…