“It’s like a bal­let. They move around in uni­son, and then there’s drama when the hawks come. It’s unique. It’s bet­ter than TV,” said Maren, my de facto tour guide to the vaux swift watch last Thurs­day night. We walked on the side­walk ap­proach­ing the Chap­man School lo­cated in North­west Port­land, Ore­gon. Our necks craned up­ward as the con­cen­tra­tion of tiny black birds in­ten­si­fied.

The des­ti­na­tion for these birds was a brick smoke­stack, a relic of the early twen­ti­eth cen­tury school build­ing. No longer used for its con­structed pur­pose, the smoke­stack now serves as the nightly rest­ing place of more than twelve thou­sand mi­grat­ing swifts dur­ing the month of Sep­tem­ber. Every year since the early 1980s, the swifts have come to roost to­gether in the brick col­umn.

As I walked up the hill, a crowd of sev­eral hun­dred Port­landers emerged. Hold­ing binoc­u­lars, sip­ping on root beer, and sit­ting on blan­kets, they watched as the birds formed a giant cy­clone, spi­ral­ing into the chim­ney. “The birds are com­ing from the clouds in Port­land and going in there!” one five-year old boy ex­plained to me as he pointed to the chim­ney.

Sev­eral green-vested Port­land Audubon mem­bers walked among the crowd to an­swer ques­tions. Rob vis­ited my group, ex­plain­ing the lifestyle of a swift. He de­scribed how swifts never stop dur­ing the day. They can’t. Their feet are tiny gar­den rakes, stiff and in­ca­pable of grab­bing branches. Their heart rate, only sur­passed by hum­ming­birds, does not allow them to rest until night.

The dom­i­nate ques­tion in­volved the tor­nado of swifts tak­ing part in their bed­time rit­ual. “They talk to each other and cre­ate this vor­tex. It’s a rit­ual they go through every night. The vor­tex is the most ef­fi­cient way for them to get into the small hole,” Rob said.

Just then, a pere­grine fal­con erupted from the chim­ney empty handed. Screams and gasps from the crowd in­ter­rupted the ca­sual evening con­ver­sa­tions.

The vor­tex dis­si­pated and formed a new cloud. Thou­sands of swifts chased the fal­con. The new cloud be­came a ser­pent in the sky as it twisted and coiled to fol­low the preda­tor. Some call it self-de­fense and oth­ers call it lib­er­a­tion the­ory. Ei­ther way, their plan did not work. The fal­con, in­dif­fer­ent to the thou­sands of angry fol­low­ers, looped around for an­other go.

“He got one!” yelled a spec­ta­tor. His tone was a mix­ture of sad­ness and ex­cite­ment. “You dirty bug­ger!” he con­tin­ued.

As night fell and the final swifts found their place, the crowd grabbed their blan­kets and re­trieved their bi­cy­cles. I walked back to mine, con­tem­plat­ing the sig­nif­i­cance of the evening. The night had a dizzy­ing elec­tric­ity to it. My psy­che buried it­self in un­di­vided fas­ci­na­tion as I tracked one bird after an­other.

Above all else, I loved how the swifts have found a place for them­selves in the mod­ern land­scape. They could have found a hol­lowed out tree like their an­ces­tors had been doing for thou­sands of years, but they chose a smoke­stack in­stead. The end re­sult: the masses re­sponded pos­i­tively, wel­com­ing change to their Sep­tem­ber evenings.

Is the choice of the swifts un­re­lated to the ques­tions we face in our world today? The temp­ta­tion is to lead a life of crit­i­cism, start over, and build a new com­mu­nity. But maybe such a re­treat an­swers the wrong ques­tion. The ques­tion is not, how can we sep­a­rate our­selves and make our world pure? The ques­tion is, can our worlds har­mo­nize?