How many times have you heard someone ask “What bird looks like a cigar with wings in flight?” The
Chimney Swift is one of America’s most well-known birds, nesting in chimneys and other similar structures. It can be seen flying in small groups over every city in eastern North America during spring and summer. Yet, for over a century and a half, the wintering grounds of this neotropical migrant remained completely unknown. In 1940, Winsor Marrett Tyler remarked “From its unknown winter quarters, somewhere in Central America or on the South American continent, the chimney swift comes northward in spring and spreads out over a wide area, which includes a large part of the United States and southern Canada.” The mystery was not solved until May 23, 1944, when the American Embassy in Lima, Peru received a report listing 13 bands turned in by a group of indigenous people who had killed the 13 banded birds along the Yanayaco River near the boundary between Peru and Columbia. Records at the Bird Banding Lab indicated these 13 bands had been placed on Chimney Swifts in Ontario, Connecticut,
