How to Identify aChimney Swift
Chaetura pelagica · 4.7–5.9 in (12–15 cm)
Male vs. female
Male
Uniformly sooty gray-brown with a paler throat, long narrow curved wings and almost no visible tail. Sexes look alike.
Female
Identical to the male in the field.
Male photo: Adam Jackson / Wikimedia, CC0
Field marks
- Cigar-shaped body with no obvious tail
- Long, narrow, curved wings held stiffly
- Uniform sooty gray-brown with no markings
- Rapid fluttering flight interspersed with glides
Similar species
What it sounds like
A hard, rapid chittering twitter given almost constantly in flight.
Behaviour that gives it away
Cannot perch like a normal bird — it clings vertically to rough inner walls of chimneys with tiny claws and a spine-tipped tail.
Habitat & range
Skies over towns and cities across the eastern United States in summer, nesting and roosting in chimneys.
When you'll see it
A summer visitor that arrives to breed in eastern and central North America.
What it eats
Flying insects caught entirely on the wing.
Did you know?
It bathes by gliding down to the water, smacking the surface with its breast, and rising again without ever stopping.
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