Four baby birds fell into my downstairs fireplace (thank God for glass doors and screens). So, I call the wildlife rescue people. Come to find out we have chimney swifts in our chimney. Now, in case you don't know it: chimney swifts are an endangered species (guess why: chimney=fire, dohhhh). Anyway, it is against federal law to remove them from the chimney so I had to get a trash can, sit it upside down in order to get the birds up past the flu, put the birds in an open box on top of the trash can and pray like the dickens that mommy bird comes back and returns the chirpers to the nest which is . . . you got it: up in my chimney somewhere. Holy crappola. I did all that last evening, but . . . apparently, mommy (if she came back last night) decided the box was just fine and the little chirpers are yakking away up inside my flu this morning. Why couldn't they just be robins or something that I could have just put in a bush and hopefully forgotten about them???? You tell me, pulllllleeeeze. Oh, and I forgot this part: chimney swifts are quite noisy birds, so all day and all night we hear a delightful squawking noise from the recesses of the ONLY FIREPLACE WE USE ALLLLLL WINTER LONG!!!!

 

Yikes...first Snatrix, now this!! All these critters must think you are their Earth Mother.

 

I don't know how chimney swifts breed but hopefully after the fledgings grow you can use a small bit of chimney smoke to drive the adults away.

fltsfshr

 

Hi Val -

Methinks the "wildlife rescue" folks didn't want their bridge game interrupted

According to the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, "Chimney Swifts are widespread and common throughout North America east of the Rocky Mountains".

http://www.birds.cornell.edu/BOW/CHISWI/


Our own chimney story didn't turn out as well as yours. We've got a HEAVY wood stove on the hearth (one I sure can't move on my own). Heard some 'noise' in the fireplace and figured it was a squirrel. Called our friendly chimney sweeps, who two weeks later (earliest they would come) sent a couple of strongarm types who moved the wood stove..... only to find a quite large (and dead) screech owl in the fireplace. Lord only knows how it got down the flue, or what it was after. Nobody we've spoken with has EVER heard of an owl getting into a fireplace.

Needless to say, the chimneys now all have caps on them.

 

Poor Val, what shall we call them, Startrix(es)? Starlingerers?

 

We have two chimneys, and one of them is much lower than the other. I noticed that the top of the lower one was well wrapped with chicken wire, and asked my father-in-law (previous owner) why there was so much wire up there?

He said they were woken one night by some loud noises from downstairs, and figured it was way too much noise for it to be a burglar. When he checked the den, there was a racoon running wild around the room, knocking things over left and right as he tried to escape.

We still have no idea why a racoon would climb a chimney and then decide to go down it, but he did.

 

^ Racoons and other critters seem to love chimneys. I've had a hawk in the fireplace (behind the glass doors). And an upsidedown racoon face peering out at me.

 

Once they leave I would suggest putting a chimney cap on top (If that is possible).
It looks like a little metal roof with a heavy mesh around it. You should be able to find that at the local hardware of Lowes.

 

I had a monkey in a furnace once.

 

^^ Yep, Zippy -- we're trying to find a chimney cap to fit, but it is not a standard chimney, so Lowe's has nothing. If we don't find a cap, then I'm going to have my house monkey climb up there and put screening on it. I called the chimney sweep to discuss removing the nest -- he said it is "against the law" to disturb chimney swifts. I can't find anything on the Va. wildlife websites about it though.