Chaetura pelagica
Silhouette: Aviceda (vectorized by T. Michael Keesey) · PhyloPic
In 3 days <5%
The chimney swift (Chaetura pelagica) is a bird belonging to the swift family Apodidae. A member of the genus Chaetura, it is closely related to both Vaux's swift and Chapman's swift; in the past, the three were sometimes considered to be conspecific. It has no subspecies. The chimney swift is a medium-sized, sooty gray bird with very long, slender wings and very short legs. Like all swifts, it is incapable of perching on flat surfaces, and can only perch on vertical surfaces. Many fly around all day and only come down at night when roosting.
The chimney swift feeds primarily on flying insects, but also on airborne spiders. It generally mates for life. It builds a bracket nest of twigs and saliva stuck to a vertical surface, which is almost always a human-built structure, typically a chimney; historically (before European colonists built chimneys), they nested in hollow trees (including old pileated woodpecker nest holes), a few still do so, though only rarely. The female lays 4–5 white eggs. The altricial young hatch after 19 days and fledge a month later. The average chimney swift lives 4.6 years.
When Carl Linnaeus first described the chimney swift... Wikipedia →
| # | City | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Baltimore | 🇺🇸 United States | |
| 2 | Chicago | 🇺🇸 United States | |
| 3 | Philadelphia | 🇺🇸 United States | |
| 4 | Washington | 🇺🇸 United States | |
| 5 | Houston | 🇺🇸 United States | |
| 6 | Boston | 🇺🇸 United States | |
| 7 | New York City | 🇺🇸 United States | |
| 8 | Dallas | 🇺🇸 United States | |
| 9 | Austin | 🇺🇸 United States | |
| 10 | Orlando | 🇺🇸 United States |
Rare
Under 5% of wildlife watchers report a Chimney Swift sighting in Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve on a given day, based on 15 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 340th most-seen of the 412 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to under 5%, if each day is a fresh chance.
Any time of year
In every month with enough records, under 5% of wildlife watchers report a Chimney Swift in Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve on a given day, so our monthly data shows no clear season.
Between 7 and 10 am
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Chimney Swift sightings with a recorded time, and about 7 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
31st of 32
Of the 32 parks where we can rate Chimney Swift sightings, Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve ranks 31st at under 5%. The best odds are in Congaree National Park (United States, about 30%), Point Pelee National Park (Canada, about 30%) and Great Smoky Mountains National Park (United States, about 20%).
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Chimney Swift is recorded against all the birds logged in Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve (15 verified sightings from 2019 to 2026), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
