Things You Should (and shouldn't) Do in Portland, Oregon

If you are fortunate enough to be in Portland, Oregon in September, there is a must see event. I'm talking must see, not maybe, not hope we have the time, not I read that there are crowds and the neighbors are annoyed so we're not going, not I don't have my LL Bean blanket and picnic basket set. Just do it. There was a crowd. And lots of kids running around. Especially one rather heavy set kid who kept running through the crowd saying he couldn't get anywhere and finally reduced to sort of wailing grunting moans by the end, but so what? We all did that. No, I would have been killed if I'd done that, but never mind.

Because all that really mattered, to us anyway, was seeing the Vaux swifts go down a chimney. Really. Sarah took this video and I suggest going full screen with it. This was probably the coolest moment. Ok, there were a lot of very cool moments. You really should see this.

This was another moment with the Cooper's hawk coming through. Or the falcon. Teresa can decide but we think it's too small for a falcon. What do I know?

After an hour or so of writing, somehow all my clever bits just disappeared. So! I'm just going to give you a few recaps, between my gnashing of teeth, of what I remember that I wrote. Which isn't much. Ok, here we go.

Vaux swifts are named after...no. I can't do it. I'm just going to let this guy do it for me, and for you, because. Because he's pretty funny and it's all true. The good news is, your reading time will be much shorter. The bad news is, I really had fun writing a lot of useless information . Ugh.

While swifts prefer hollow trees they'll settle for the Chapman School chimney. The school actually got rid of the heating system that used this chimney and between the Audubon Society and some donors, put in another one, so that for the month of September, the swifts could fill this sucker from the basement up. Being slightly claustrophobic, this fact is one I'd rather not thnk about. And can't stop thinking about 

And just know this, too. If there wasn't some stupid science rule that you can't name a species after yourself, these birds would be called Townsend's Swifts. Vaux was a mineralogist and apparent good buddy of Townsend, the real guy who sussed out this particular swift (one species out of 96 if you must know).

One more thing. The Audubon Society woman who was carrying around the DEAD swift in the plastic box, talking to, and I quote - "anyone who looks interested" - which Sarah and I escaped because we are well practiced in the art of becoming invisible around people like that and sometimes succeed - that women? She should not be doing that; telling gruesome stories about the swifts suffocating in the chimney. Oh, but not NOW, she says, like the elixir of modern times has somehow changed physics. Now they all live happy little lives, flying around from sunrise to sunset, eating bugs, never stopping flying, because they have these sort of bound geisha type feet that they can't really use for much. Frankly, it was all the stuff of nightmares.

But the swifts were awesome. Completely jaw dropping (as we wondered if they were pooping tiny little poops on all of us). Too awesome to let an entirely finished post complete with brilliant links suppress me for long. And you thought you were getting off easy today.

All of that swift and people watching was after we went on a long hike we were both pretty sure was going to kill us, but I think I'll leave that for tomorrow. I'm exhausted just thinking about it.

Hint: it didn't kill us

Have a transformative Thursday. Do something that tires you totally.