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Where did the Chapman swifts go? They aren’t at the school, but the birds are still out there

• Updated: Sep. 20, 2024, 3:26 p.m.
• | Published: Sep. 20, 2024, 12:45 p.m.

• Samantha Swindler | The Oregonian/OregonLive

The migrating Vaux’s swifts, which normally roost by the thousands in the old chimney at Portland’s Chapman Elementary School throughout September, have abandoned the site early this year.

Don’t worry: The tiny birds have long used multiple sites to overnight in the area, and it seems many of them have taken up residence at new spots.

What remains a mystery is, why?

“It’s unusual that they’re not at Chapman,” said Joe Liebezeit, assistant director of statewide conservation for the Bird Alliance of Oregon . “They’ve been using that chimney in large numbers since the 1980s, and I think we get into the habit of relying on that.”

It’s not that unusual for birds to forgo using a chimney for several years, only to return sometime later. What is strange is for the swifts to abandon their largest, most consistent roosting spot in the city.

“Anytime you see birds disappearing from a place that they’ve relied on for many, many years in such large numbers, it definitely is a cause for concern from the conservation end,” Liebezeit said.

In past years, the decommissioned Chapman school chimney has drawn more than 10,000 swifts each night as the birds make their migration south in September and early October. This year, the peak number of estimated swifts was 5,430 birds counted on Sept. 2.

But by Sept. 14, the swifts had abandoned the Chapman chimney, and they haven’t been back since.

After the migration season, the Bird Alliance of Oregon will investigate the Chapman chimney to make sure there isn’t an internal blockage that’s keeping the swifts away.

Liebezeit suspects an increase in predators may have scared the birds away. Cooper’s hawks and peregrine falcons, which often catch swifts as they enter the chimney, seem to be staying at Chapman for longer periods of time.

“I monitored the swifts on Aug. 31 this year,” Liebezeit said, “and there was a Cooper’s hawk that flew to the top of the chimney and hung out there for 45 minutes, into when the sun was down, and the birds were still waiting to go in.”

The Bird Alliance doesn’t think the presence of people at the school caused the swifts to leave. In addition to counting numbers of birds, the nonprofit also counts the number of people watching them each night. While an errant drone has scared the flocks away in the past, spectators on the ground have not.

So, if the swifts aren’t at Chapman, where are they?

Lately, about 4,000 swifts have been spotted roosting nightly at the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church at Northeast Glisan Street and 32nd Avenue. The Bird Alliance of Oregon has been in touch with church staff to ensure the furnace isn’t used while the birds are roosting, Liebezeit said.

He also cautioned bird watchers about overrunning the new location, which isn’t equipped to handle the thousands of onlookers that have traditionally watched the birds at Chapman school.

“A sudden influx of the public to different neighborhoods can cause disruptions in parking, an increase in trash, and potentially inhibit local events and businesses,” the alliance wrote in an online update about the swifts. “We want to ensure that any new-found fame of a neighborhood or institution based on their avian guests doesn’t cause increased challenges.”

Larry Schwitters, who runs the swift tracking site Vaux’s Happening , has a theory about why the birds have moved away from Chapman. Schwitters tracks reports of swift sightings all along the west coast. Over the past few years, the birds also stopped roosting near Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington.

“It began about the time the wee birds discovered the just opened stack in Rainier,” he wrote in an email. “They now push on from Canada to Rainier for their first overnighter in the USA.”

That “stack” is the Riverside Community Church in Rainier . Since 2019, after a cover was removed from the church’s decommissioned chimney, it’s become one of the largest tracked roosting sites in Oregon. As recently as last week, volunteers were counting more than 15,000 swifts a night there. It’s possible the birds are stopping in Rainier and then bypassing Portland. About 10,000 swifts were also counted last week at Agate Hall in Eugene.

In more promising news, Schwitters has gotten reports of thousands of swifts roosting in what was their original habitat: a hollowed out old growth tree in the Olympic National Park near Lake Cushman. That tree hadn’t previously been tracked by Vaux’s Happening.

Volunteers with the Bird Alliance of Oregon will continue to monitor the Chapman chimney through the end of the month, as they do every year.

“It might be a little boring for them if there’s no birds that show up, but negative data is just as important as getting count data,” Liebezeit said. “Chapman’s always been a stalwart site where we’ve had many, many birds every year for decades. Things have changed, at least this year. We’ll see what happens next year.”

— Samantha Swindler covers features for The Oregonian/OregonLive and Here is Oregon . Reach her at [email protected] .

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Home / Blog / Where Did the Vaux’s Swifts Go and Why Did They Leave Chapman Elementary School Early?

Where Did the Vaux’s Swifts Go and Why Did They Leave Chapman Elementary School Early?

For decades the Vaux’s Swifts have flocked to Chapman Elementary School in NW Portland, using the chimney as a place to roost during the month of September. Hundreds of thousands of people have enjoyed the spectacle, including this year which saw a peak of 5,430 swifts on September 2.

If you’ve been watching our community science page or attended Swift Watch over the last week, you’ve likely noticed a large decline in numbers, with the count dropping to almost zero over the last few days. The question on everyone’s mind is, where did they go? And why did they leave their longtime roost site at Chapman?

Chapman Elementary has never been the only roost site for swifts in the Portland area, but it has always been the largest. This year, swifts appear to be seeking out other chimneys, with the largest numbers seen at a site in northeast Portland. We can’t provide a definitive answer on why the swifts have moved. However, it’s possible that an increased presence of predators may have driven the swifts to change locations. Predators like Cooper’s Hawks and American Crows have always been at Chapman, but this year we’ve seen predators stay for longer periods, delaying the swifts’ entry into the chimney. This theory requires more investigation and additional observation from our community science team.

If people do head to other locations looking for the swifts, we ask everyone to be respectful of the neighborhood, as it’s no easy task to account for an influx of that many guests. Most nights of Swift Watch at Chapman Elementary have attracted more than a thousand people in a single evening. For over twenty years, these naturally-occurring gatherings of people and birds have been supported by a coordinated team of staff and volunteers from Bird Alliance of Oregon, Portland Parks and Recreation, and Chapman Elementary School. A sudden influx of the public to different neighborhoods can cause disruptions in parking, an increase in trash, and potentially inhibit local events and businesses. We want to ensure that any new-found fame of a neighborhood or institution based on their avian guests doesn’t cause increased challenges.

Will the swifts be back at Chapman next year? Only time will tell, but we’ll keep you all updated.

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California Politics | John Eastman, former California university law…

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California politics | an invasive mosquito was spotted in south bay. here’s how you can stop the dangerous pest., california politics, california politics | john eastman, former chapman law dean and trump attorney, finds things to celebrate, column: critics, however, predict doom for his law practice.

Embattled attorney John Eastman is taking a wee victory lap in what has been an eventful September — even as he battles to keep his law license and raise $1.5 million for his legal defense.

“Happy Constitution Day, everyone,” Eastman wrote in a GiveSendGo fundraising update on Sept. 17, “the day in 1787 that our founders concluded their work after a long, hot summer in Philadelphia and submitted the proposed Constitution to the people of the several states for deliberation and ratification.

“Ben Franklin was famously asked, ‘What have you given us, A republic or a monarchy?’ He responded, ‘A Republic, if you can keep it!’ Keeping it requires constant vigilence, and today that means, in part, fighting against the lawfare that is wreaking havoc on our justice system.”

This “lawfare” is, incidentally, also wreaking havoc on the career, reputation and pocketbook of Eastman, former dean of Chapman University Law School. He’s the target of criminal prosecutions in two states and what he suspects is “the longest, most expensive bar disciplinary proceeding in history” here at home.

But Eastman relished “some major headway on both fronts” in September.

The litany of withering charges against Eastman from the California Bar included moral turpitude, dishonesty and/or corruption, willful misconduct and/or gross negligence, trying to reverse the legitimate results of an election and essentially yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater.

Back in March, a California State Bar judge ruled that Eastman betrayed the fundamental oaths he swore to uphold as a licensed attorney when he spread untruths about the 2020 election and tried to keep then-President Donald Trump in power, thus should lose his license. Eastman’s lawyers filed an 85-page “tour de force” in response on Sept. 13, demanding that conclusion must be rejected.

“This disciplinary prosecution is an extraordinary, unprecedented, and abjectly misguided foray by the California Bar into the 2020 presidential election, one of the most hotly debated, disputed, and controversial elections in our nation’s history – and in which lawyers on all sides played prominent roles before, during, and after – Dr. Eastman amongst them,” the colorful brief says.

“Yet, out of that legal conflagration, the Bar selectively plucks Dr. Eastman from the election-litigation scrum to prosecute him for his research, legal advice, role as counsel of record in consequential court cases, and public statements – all on behalf of clients who sought his active and zealous advocacy and legal and constitutional acumen.”

“The stupefying result” ravaged Eastman’s First Amendment rights to speech and to petition the government, violated due process and wreaked of bias and partisanship, they argue. “In sum, this prosecution should never have taken place. It is, rather, a manifestation of George Orwell’s dystopic depiction of authoritarianism – statements by the Government, no matter how demonstrably false or suspect, must be accepted as truth.”

The State Bar judge hearing the case would scoff. “While attorneys have a duty to advocate zealously for their clients, they must do so within the bounds of ethical and legal constraints,” she wrote. “Eastman’s actions transgressed those ethical limits by advocating, participating in and pursuing a strategy to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election that lacked evidentiary or legal support. Vigorous advocacy does not absolve Eastman of his professional responsibilities around honesty and upholding the rule of law.”

Several of the original nine counts filed against Eastman in Fulton County — over what prosecutors say was an attempt to overturn the election results —  have been dismissed.

The essence is that state charges about filing false documents in federal court can’t stand.

But six charges against Eastman remain, “including, unbelievably, the Racketeering conspiracy charge,” Eastman wrote. “But we have a great legal team in place and we’re prepared for the long haul, once the Georgia Court of Appeals determines whether Fani Willis can continue to prosecute the case or, instead, is disqualified and the case gets transferred to a different prosecutor.”

You can read the rulings here and here .

Eastman faces charges related to attempting to overturn election results in Arizona as well.

There, “We filed an important ‘anti-SLAPP’ motion seeking to dismiss the indictment as a violation of First Amendment rights,” Eastman wrote. “A couple of years ago, Arizona became the first State in the Union to include criminal prosecutions in its anti-SLAPP statute. The hearing originally scheduled for a few hours on August 26 ending up lasting 3 days. We believe we made a compelling argument for why the case should be dismissed, and now await the judge’s ruling.”

The judge set a tentative trial date for January 2026, he said, stressing that he’ll need money to cover the fees of his “terrific legal team.”

“The left’s efforts to bleed me dry is one of the key goals of their lawfare attacks — to keep me on defense and scare others from ever taking on the kind of cases I’m known for, protecting our constitutional rights against an increasingly abusive government,” he wrote.

Eastman’s GiveSendGo page asked donors for $200,000 back in 2022.

He had received $856,078 as of May; raised a bit more than $40,000 over the summer; and is just shy of $900,000 as of last week.

The “surreal, exhausting battle to defend my integrity,” as he put it in one fundraising email, will cost some $3 million to $3.5 million.

Eastman’s fringe legal theories (that the vice president had the power to reject state counts, postpone the count and/or recognize “alternate” state electors) functioned as “a serpent in the ear of the President of the United States,” Vice President Mike Pence’s attorney wrote to Eastman as the rioters swarmed on Jan. 6. “Thanks to your (expletive), we are now under siege.”

Eastman paints his critics as out-of-control leftists — but many conservatives have withering words for him as well.

“Is President Trump’s re-election campaign better off or worse with John Eastman’s legal advice?” mused Laguna Niguel attorney James V. Lacy, who served in the Reagan and Bush administrations and is rooting for Trump.

“I’d say it is worse off, as Eastman’s ridiculous conclusion as a constitutional lawyer that Vice President Mike Pence could throw a monkey wrench into presidential succession in 2021 is at the very heart of the Left’s claims that Trump’s re-election ‘will end democracy.’… Eastman is going to get disbarred, he is ultimately going to lose his license to practice before the Supreme Court, and I hope Trump wins to save democracy, this time with sane legal advice.”

There’s much fear and loathing around the election — we seem primed for chaos no matter who wins.

“I am very happy to hear of your recent success in GA and am praying for continued success. Evil is really being exposed but we know good will win. God bless you and your family. You are a true PATRIOT and it’s being proven by how rabidly they are coming after you,” $55 donor Deborah Forbeck wrote to Eastman last week.

A group of attorneys will be watching for Eastman-like antics . Ads are set to run in swing state legal journals reminding lawyers that they’re ethically barred from bringing false claims on behalf of any client.

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Vera Ivanova graduated from the Moscow Conservatory (Honours Diploma), Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London (MM with distinction), and the Eastman School of Music (Ph.D. in Composition). Her works have been performed in Russia, Europe and the U.S.A.

After teaching as Assistant Professor of Theory and Composition at the Setnor School of Music of Syracuse University (NY), she was appointed as Assistant Professor of Music in the College of Performing Arts at Chapman University (Orange, California), where she currently works at the rank of tenured Associate Professor.

Vera Ivanova's compositions have been described as "...humanistic and deeply felt works... " (John Bilotta, Society of Composers, Inc.). In her early Fantasy-Toccata (2003) for violin and piano, "the humor takes on a harder, sardonic edge recalling the composer's roots in the work of Shostakovich and Schnittke" (Ted Ayala, Crescenta Valley Weekly). In her later Three Studies in Uneven Meters for piano (2011), "the greatest power of her brief, angular, crystalline music lies in its power to provoke the gods of symmetry" (Laurence Vittes, Lark Gallery Online Blog).

Dr. Ivanova is a recipient of the Sproull Fellowship at Eastman , the Gwyn Ellis Bequest Scholarship at Guildhall School , Moscow Culture Committee and American Composers Forum Subito grants, Honourable mention at the 28th Bourges Electro-Acoustic Competition , 3rd Prize at the 8th International Mozart Competition, 1st Prize in Category "A" at International Contest of Acousmatic Compositions Métamorphoses 2004 (Belgium), the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers Award , the André Chevillion-Yvonne Bonnaud Composition Prize at the 8th International Piano Competition at Orléans (France), and the Special Award from Yvar Mikhashoff Trust for New Music . She is also a winner of the 2013 Athena Festival Chamber Competition and the 2013 Earplay Donald Aird Composers Competition and was selected to be Norton Stevens Fellow at the prestigious MacDowell colony residency in winter 2013-14.

Vera is actively involved in new music not only as a composer, but as an advisor (she's been invited to be on advisory board of the American Composers Forum , Los Angeles chapter), adjudicator ( UnTwelve Composition Competition , Synchromy calls for scores, International Computer Music Conference Calls for Music, MTAC Composers Today program Adjudicators Coordinator) and concert-runner/organizer (new music concerts at Chapman University's Conservatory of Music and Synchromy group of Los Angeles-based composers, of which she is a founding member).

Her music is available in print from Universal Edition and Theodore Front Music Literature, Inc ., SCI Journal of Music Scores (vol. 45), on CD's from MicroFest Records ( Beyond 12 Album), Ablaze Records ( Millennial Masters series, Vol. 2), Quartz Music, Ltd ., Navona Records ( Nova and Allusions albums), Musiques & Recherches ( Métamorphoses 2004), Centaur Records (CRC 3056), Soundiff ( Miniatures Album, vol. 1) and on her website at: www.veraivanova.com .

Recent Creative, Scholarly Work and Publications

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