Monroe Swift Night Out

For this year’s details, visit the Monroe Swift website. Eastside Audubon and other local organizations invite you to Swift Night Out, their annual festival held on a Saturday evening in September to celebrate the peak of the Vaux’s migration in Monroe. Each September thousands of migrating Vaux’s Swifts pause to roost in the old brick chimney at Frank Wagner Elementary School in Monroe, a rest stop on their route from northwestern Canada to Central America and Venezuela. An unforgettable spectacle unfolds each evening when the Vaux’s are in town. About an hour before sunset they begin to gather, circling the chimney in growing numbers. All at once as the sun goes down, they whisk into the chimney – tails first! There can be as many as 20,000 Vaux’s on an evening during the first weeks of September, and the birds keep coming in smaller numbers even into early October.