PORTLAND, Ore. ( KOIN ) – Watching Vaux’s Swifts roost in the chimney of Chapman Elementary School has been a Portland tradition for decades.
But this year, the Bird Alliance of Oregon , a wildlife advocacy organization, noticed something “unusual”: a significant decrease in the number of Swifts at Chapman in the last week, with the count dropping to almost zero.
“This phenomena of them not being at Chapman is unusual in the sense that we’ve had them there for years, for decades really, and in big numbers every year and I’ve never seen them absent,” said Joe Liebezeit, assistant director of statewide conservation for the Bird Alliance of Oregon.
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The Bird Alliance of Oregon has been monitoring the swifts at Chapman and other chimneys in the area for the last 15 years with help from trained community members who count the birds every night during the fall migration from late August until early October.