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Vaux Swifts / Larry Schwitters – BHAS Speaker Series
September 8, 2016 @ 7:00 pm-9:00 pm
After tracking down and evaluating all the Washington State waterfalls that could be safely approached, Larry Schwitters turned his attention to the smaller, more urban Vaux’s Swift, and their communal migratory roost sites. Vaux’s Swift was a little studied species, for which there was, outside of Portland, a surprising lack of awareness of their evening roosting spectacle. Schwitters, working with Audubon has changed that. His Vaux’s Happening project is the subject of a Smithsonian on line article that can be viewed at http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-disappearing-habitats-of-the-vauxs-swifts-409845/ Schwitters and his project were also featured in “High Country News” at http://www.hcn.org/issues/44.12/save-a-chimney-save-a-swift He has presented the Vaux’s Happening story over 60 times, including at the North American Swift Symposium in Raleigh North Carolina and the international Swift Conference at Cambridge Great Britain.
For the last 16 migrations Larry has pressed on with his Vaux’s Happening Project documenting over eight million roosting swifts, and with his wife Leora, continues to explore the edges of the continent in their quest for up close and personal time with each bird species found in North America.
Larry Schwitters has a Masters of Science degree from East Texas State University, funded by a National Science Foundation competitive grant. He spent thirty years in the trenches of public education, mostly as a middle school science teacher and coach in the Renton School District. His first, after early retirement involvement with the avian Apodidae family was Black Swift field research for the American Bird Conservancy. His experiences in this endeavor were the subject of the cover story for the American Birding associations “Winging It”. That article can be viewed at http://www.aba.org/wingingit/v19n1p1.pdf Schwitters also contributed to Rich Levad’s stunning “The Coolest Bird”, a natural history of the Black Swift and those who have pursued it. Some information and download possible at http://earbirding.com/blog/archives/2354