Chimney Swift Nest Cam

Inside the Swift Tower

This camera looks straight into a custom-built chimney swift tower at Stormy Oaks Nature Conservancy, an artificial structure raised specifically to give Chimney Swifts a safe nesting cavity. The wooden shaft mimics the hollow trees and masonry flues the species has relied on for generations, offering an unusually intimate look at a nest most people never get to see.

Built for Life on the Wing

Chimney Swifts are true aerial specialists: their short, stiff legs and hooked claws are built only for clinging to vertical surfaces, so a swift is never seen perched on a branch. Instead the birds spend almost every moment airborne, sweeping through the sky to catch insects, only clinging to a wall like this one to rest or tend a nest.

A Nest of Twigs and Saliva

The cup-shaped nest cemented to the chimney wall is built entirely from small twigs the birds snap off in flight and glue together with sticky saliva. Pairs typically raise a clutch of three to five chicks, often with an extra adult helper assisting the parents, and frequently return to the very same tower and mate the following year.

A Conservation Partnership

Wildbird Recovery, the nonprofit based at Stormy Oaks, built this tower to offset the loss of old-growth hollow trees that once sheltered the species; Chimney Swift numbers have fallen sharply since 1970. The feed is run with Saint Vincent College's Ornithology program as an ongoing research and education project.