It is April and that means the Vaux’s Swifts are migrating north and will arrive mid-to-late April at the Frank Wagner Center (formerly Frank Wagner Elementary School) chimney in Monroe, Washington to roost while on their northbound journey to the forests to begin their spring nesting cycle.
The City of Monroe is very fortunate to have these wonderful little migrants visit their area every year and to have them come to this very accessible site in downtown Monroe. One can just park the car on the street and walk across the lawn to view the swifts and the chimney. No long or arduous hikes are necessary here.
Visitors from around the world and from local communities come to witness the aerial acrobatics of these little birds as they enter the chimney each night over a 10-week period in the spring and again in the fall.
We celebrated “Monroe Swift Night Out” last weekend and had a fabulous time! The spaghetti feed was delicious, the weather was superb, the booths were interesting, the talk was great.
And to top it off, the swift aerial show was FABULOUS!
But if you missed the event, the swifts are still coming to the chimney – so stop by any evening about 1/2 hour before sunset and you will get a great show.
We are gearing up for a month of swift action at Frank Wagner Center in Monroe, and need some more volunteers to help by being Docents and/or Counters.
We need help for Swifts Night Out on Saturday, September 15,th and for the month of September (and maybe October too). Docents are there to answer questions of passerbys (sometimes there are many); counters actually count the number of swifts going into the chimney. Docents do NOT need to be experienced – we can share some fun and interesting facts that are sure to answer the questions most folks have.
Even coming by to serve as docent or counter for an evening would help out.
If you are interested, there is going to be a short training session for new docents this Wednesday, 8/29 at 6:30pm, at the Frank Wagner Center.
We hope you will be able to participate in this training and help with our Monroe Swifts Program. First of all, it is really fun and these little birds are so interesting. Being a docent is not a big commitment, especially if we have a good number of volunteers. Please plan to come to the training and get involved with this important program!
Dr Swift went up on the Wagner roof yesterday and drove down to Olympia to get our new inside chimney cam. He goes up on the Wag roof again today and if we are really lucky we will be live streaming with Infrared (so we can see inside where it’s dark) before the week is over.
