Chasing Waterfalls: The Search for Glacier’s Hidden Wildlife

Chasing one of Glacier’s most elusive species, and getting comfortable in the dark. This is the story of Black Swifts in Glacier.

Headwaters is created by Daniel Lombardi, Michael Faist, Gaby Eseverri, and Peri Sasnett.

Glacier Conservancy: https://glacier.org/headwaters Frank Waln music: https://www.instagram.com/frankwaln/ Stella Nall art: https://www.instagram.com/stella.nall/

Chasing one of Glacier’s most elusive species, and getting comfortable in the dark. This is the story of Black Swifts in Glacier.

Headwaters is created by Daniel Lombardi, Michael Faist, Gaby Eseverri, and Peri Sasnett.

Glacier Conservancy: https://glacier.org/headwaters Frank Waln music: https://www.instagram.com/frankwaln/ Stella Nall art: https://www.instagram.com/stella.nall/

---

TRANSCRIPT:

---

Lacy Kowalski: Headwaters is supported by the Glacier National Park Conservancy.

Peri Sasnett: How many animals have you walked by and never noticed? How many species live around you that you've never even heard of?

Amy Seaman: Most people are kind of excited that they had no idea another thing existed and I think that is-it's like yet one more mystery.

Peri: One of these unknown species is a rarely seen creature that most people here have never heard of. They live behind waterfalls and can travel up to 90 miles an hour.

Amy: Yeah, it's fun because they're really dark and you just think it's a bat or something, so we started calling them black lightning.

Peri: To have a chance at seeing them. Most of the time you'll need to leave the trail, bushwhack for hours with alders swatting you in the face and mosquitoes trying to bite you as sweat drips down your face. Then those same alders lend a hand. As the terrain turns steep and you use them to pull yourself up precipitous slopes. Then the shrubs fade away and you're clambering up a steep field of loose rock, feeling them shifting as you step and hoping they stay put. Oh, and by the way, it's 4:00 in the morning, so it's pitch black. [theme music fades in; starting with a mandolin] Finally, you reach the base of a waterfall where the rocks are slick underfoot and it's loud from the pounding water and cold and damp from the ever-present mist. And this is where you find them. Black swifts.

[theme continues; a drumbeat, a flute line, and other instruments come in, before the music finishes]

Peri: I'm Peri, and you're listening to Headwaters, a show about how Glacier National Park is connected to everything else. I love birds, seeing them, hearing them, and also counting them. This year so far, I found 242 species and counting, but I've never seen a black swift. For a lot of birders, seeing a brand-new species can be a highlight of your month or even of your year. It's called a life bird. I've looked for black swifts every summer I've lived here, but I strike out every time. They're basically big black cigars that fly thousands of feet in the air, and they're incredibly hard to see. But today, I'm going out with Amy Seaman from Montana Audubon and her team to survey for these elusive birds. And hopefully I'll be in luck. But this isn't just a story about me going birdwatching. It's a story about learning to feel comfortable in the dark and how to cherish the mysteries we may never solve.

[birds singing]

Amy: Once it shoots out, your eye might not pick it up until like out here, where it's out further from the waterfall and I think part of that is just the speed they come out.

Peri: [in the field] Which is how fast?

Amy: So fast.

[laughter] [voices slowly fade under the narration]

Peri: That’s Amy. She's an all-around bird expert, but has spent a lot of the last ten summers looking for black swifts in a collaborative effort between Montana Audubon and the Park with support from the Glacier Conservancy. With her help, I thought it'd be a lot easier to find them, but it is definitely not easy.

Peri: [in the field] So birds are basically too fast to see in your binoculars.

Amy: They really are.

Peri: And if you want a glimpse of them, you're going to have to do an alpine start.

Peri: [in the field] I rolled out of bed at 3:05, got dressed and brushed my teeth and tumbled down the stairs and had just enough time to zoom out the door into the car to then drive an hour to get here.

Peri: So I'm tired. There's rain in the forecast and it's also fully dark outside. Black swifts are early risers, much earlier than me. They're not quite nocturnal, but they aren't just active during the day either. Amy and other researchers have had the most luck looking for them around their nests at dawn or dusk.

Peri: [in the field] We’re on the side of the Going to the Sun Road, where a creek flows below the road through a culvert, and we're starting to hear the first birdsong. And we're staring at a waterfall, [birds singing] trying to see these little black specks moving at 90 miles an hour.

Peri: Black swifts are aerial insectivores, meaning they catch and eat bugs as they fly, especially flying ants. One study found swifts regularly flying at altitudes over 13,000 feet, and they're almost always flying. When they're not nesting, they spend 99% of their time in the air day and night. That's something like eight months of flying. [pensive synth music fades in] How do you study a bird that basically never stops? [birds singing] [sound of rushing water fades in]

Peri: [in the field] So how long have you been doing swifts surveys?

Amy: This is actually year ten, the beginning of the 10th year.

Peri: [in the field] Oh, wow.

Amy: Yeah. Which is so fun to think, but it's fun. We have just as many questions, but we have learned a lot more. [music fades out]

Peri: [in the field] So when you started, you didn't know how many birds there were, didn't know how to look for them, didn't know what their nest sites really looked like.

Amy: Exactly.

Peri: But despite the things that Amy and others have been able to learn, there's plenty of mystery left. And Amy loves it.

Amy: [to Peri, in the studio] I've always wanted to know what's around me. That was a lifetime goal of like when I'm a kid and I want to grow up, I want to say, hey, I'm on a hike, and what is this thing that I'm walking near or pretty flower that I'm looking at? Then you're like, wait, there is stuff we don't know. So it was this whole circle of like-

Peri: You're a black swift explorer.

Amy: I can't believe there's a bird that we found the sixth nest of in the state.

Peri: That's incredible.

Amy: It's a wild sentence, and it's so fun, and you're like, we didn't know where they wintered until 2012.

Peri: [narration] Scientists have learned about many birds migrations through banding programs that started in the early 1900s. But it wasn't until 2012 that we started to learn where swifts migrate. Using tiny geo locators, researchers in Colorado discovered that they were wintering in the lowland forests of Brazil. But where exactly our swifts from Montana go, is still a question, but we do know that they're declining. A 2016 report compiled by Partners in Flight estimated dramatic declines since 1970. Climate change, pesticides and habitat disturbance are all pressuring these birds. So much about them, especially Glacier’s population, is unknown.

Amy: And I'll never forget my first year at Sperry Chalet meeting a person who had hiked here for decades and had never heard of this bird. And he could name every plant on the side of the trail. So he's like, well, what are you guys here for? And we’re like, oh, actually, these birds right up in this waterfall that he's-you mean you can look out from the chalet and you've seen for years, and then he was just floored.

Peri: And Amy's been working to study swifts and spread the word about them for the last ten years.

Amy: There's enough sites now to start monitoring to a number of birds because, of course, at some point, you know, funders want to know. Conservationists want to know like, well, what's the number? Are we running out? Are they declining? Are they not? [pensive synth music fades in]

Peri: Personally, I'll just be happy if I get a little glimpse of just one.

[birds singing] [rushing water sound fades in]

Peri: [in the field] Okay. Have I missed anything?

Amy: Not yet. Just staring.

[Peri chuckles]

Peri: I'm standing with Amy and her team, [music slowly fades out] all of us staring intently at the waterfall, coming out from under Going to the Sun Road. I'm bundled up, but the cold, damp air is still somehow seeping in.

Peri: [in the field] It's 5:25 now. I still see no swifts, although it's seeming less absurd that I might be able to see them now that it's a little lighter. But it hasn't happened yet.

Amy: We do call them the swifting hour. There's like a certain light that starts to settle in in the morning or night, and you're like, oh okay, this is I can feel the activity now…

[Amy’s voice fades under narration]

Peri: Maybe Amy could feel it, but I was not at her level.

[birds singing] [rushing water sound fades in]

Peri: [in the field] So I'm just looking at the waterfall in my binoculars and we talked for like two hours yesterday about how you can find the nest and what to look for and this kind of nook or crevice or the whitewash from their pops out of the nest. And they made it all seem very straightforward. And I am befuddled.

[rushing water sound fades out]

Peri: Needless to say, seeing a swift, even with Amy's help, was not going to be as simple as I'd hoped. But compared to most of their sites, which involve not just a drive but hiking miles off trail to get to… this is a breeze.

[rushing water sound fades in]

Peri: [in the field] So is this like the cruisiest survey spot you guys have?

Amy: Yes. [Peri chuckles] I would say I've never rolled up and I was like, I'm going to wear Crocs just because I can this morning. [Peri chuckles]

Peri: It was enough of a challenge for me to get up at three in the morning and grateful we did not have to backpack here or bushwhack for hours up a mountain.

Amy: So like swifting is not for the faint of heart.

[Chuckling]

Peri: You would be right.

Amy: Also, because you get so excited sometimes like, oh, I'm going to have a heart attack because of my excitement level. [Peri chuckles]

Peri: I can't say that I was at heart attack levels of excitement, but some booms of thunder did start to get my heart going. [thunder and rain fade in]

Peri: [in the field] Okay. Status update. It's 5:59 a.m. It's thundering quite a bit, seeing some lightning off to the north. I still have seen no swifts. I don't know if this is looking promising.

[thunder and rain get louder]

Amy: Shoot. I might just put my rain jacket on. If it's pouring, we won't survey, but we have done some like half rainy ones.

Peri: It's honestly hard to tell if it's passed on yet because the storm clouds have made it so dark. We take refuge in the car and the storm lets loose. [car door opens and closes] [thunder and rain intensifies] Rain is coming down in sheets and pouring off the cliffs above the road. In a way, the wet weather is appropriate. Black swifts nest behind waterfalls peeking out through the mist with their big dark eyes. As the clouds empty around me and my nose fogs the car window, I suppose I'm getting a glimpse of what their habitat might feel like. [rain and thunder fades out] One question I had was why did they so often nest behind or around waterfalls in the first place? There isn't conclusive evidence, but experts think it serves a few purposes. The first is to avoid predators, and another possibility is climate control.

Amy: But then, apparently the water is good for the temperature to be cool because they're not fluctuating.

Amy: Like they're not getting so hot either-

Peri: [in the field] It’s just steady.

Amy: Yeah I think it stays basically like 45 degrees all the time.

Peri: Glacier has plenty of waterfalls in the spring, fed by melting winter snow. But by late summer, most of them run dry. Black swifts are smart enough to only pick waterfalls that will protect and cool their chicks all the way until the end of summer. And those can only be fed by glaciers and persistent snowfields, which this park has a lot of.

Amy: [in the studio with Peri] We have realized that this-they love Glacier National Park. There are more nests here than in the rest of the state combined, that we know of.

Peri: But as temperatures warm with climate change, the sources of these waterfalls, those glaciers and snowfields are declining.

Peri: [in the studio with Amy] Because I guess you could see the swifts as a bit of a canary in the coal mine. And as you say, like the waterfalls or where they are, they can't move up in elevation, but also they feed on insects. And so as insects decline, like, that's even more invisible.

Amy: Yeah. And I think you're totally nailed it because part of the interest in studying black swifts isn't just that they do have a unique place that we just didn't know about them, but they totally share a decline with other aerial insectivores and the jury's kind of out on exactly what issues are happening…[Amy fades out under narration]

Peri: This is one of the biggest motivations for their studies in Glacier, trying to figure out what the population is like and how worried they need to be.

Amy: And it also helps us know like, oh, maybe we don't need to hit the panic button either right away. There is a lot of great habitat in Montana, and it could be that we have a lot more of these birds than we thought.

Peri: But all of Amy's work can still only go so far.

Amy: We can also learn only what we can learn in Montana. We don't know anything that these birds are encountering on their migration or on their wintering grounds.

Peri: And even with ten years of data from Glacier and efforts in Colorado and Idaho, we still know remarkably little about these birds compared with almost every other species I might see on a morning walk. It makes me wonder what else I'm missing.

Amy: If a tree falls in the forest and you don't hear it right, like what happens? [pensive synth music fades in] And then so it's like if a black swift disappears from a waterfall, but we never know they were ever at the waterfall. To me, there's something really interesting that's lost in that.

[mellow synth music gets louder]

Peri: Still hiding out from the rain, talking with Amy in the car, I've pretty much lost all hope of seeing a swift today. Maybe of ever seeing one. I feel like the thunderstorm is an embodiment of climate change and all the threats these little birds are facing looming over all of us. As the park's glaciers retreat and disappear, people notice and they care. But does it matter if a bird that I might never see disappears? Can you love something you've never seen?

[music continues]

Peri: [in the field] All right. It's 6:38 now. The storm has abated. [car drives by] [birds singing] There are a lot more cars now. I'm still seeing no swifts, but... so you would normally survey until 7:15. [car drives by] We have another like half hour. So do you think you see any swifts?

Daniel Lombardi: I mean, there is like a smudge back there that could be something, but it's not moving and…

Peri: Right. I see a smudge, but I don't see…

Technician: I’ll put on the data sheet, smudge on nest. [group chuckles]

Daniel: Yeah.

Amy: I'm pretty sure this is a bird. It's a bird. There's a bird.

Peri: There's a bird. But I'll take a look on the scope and see if I can see anything of what I just thought was a blob.

Daniel: Was it a smudge or a blob?

Peri: A “smob”?

[Daniel and Peri chuckle]

Peri: It’s tucked away back in this little nook. And I can see a white blob above the smudge. See, I thought I saw it move, but now I'm second guessing myself. [cars drive by] Maybe I'm just moving. Oh. Oh, I see the, yeah, I see the tail. Oh, my God. It's huge. Okay. I thought it was going to be a tiny little bird, but it's huge.

Amy: It's big.

Peri: Oh! [Daniel laughs]

Amy: Kind of crazy because you're like, this doesn’t-

Peri: I was looking for, like, a tiny little swallow sized bird.

Peri: Oh! it moved its head. It's very exciting.

Peri: [narration] Thousands of people drive on the road past this nest site every day and would never know these birds are living their lives here. I've driven past this site dozens and dozens of times. But now I'll look for them every time I drive past.

Peri: [in the field] You can see it so well now. You see its eyeball and see its little wings cross over its tail. It's looking at me.

Daniel: It's in a really small space. [cars drive by]

Peri: Yeah. It's like it's wrapped up in its little sleeping bag of moss and rock.

Peri: [narration] That black swift perched underneath a waterfall, peering back at me from its damp ledge felt like a glimpse into a whole part of Glacier that usually hides out of sight.

Peri: [in the field] It has black, shiny wings and black feathers, and I can see a little tiny bit of white on the front of its face and a big black eyeball kind of looking at me. So it's like a little bit of light, but mostly dark, which was also our experience in this survey. They do a whole lot of things in the dark, and mostly we can't really see them during the day and most of their lives are in the dark. But we're learning a little bit more each year and each survey.

Peri: [in the studio with Amy] In all these years, what do you think you've learned from black swifts?

Amy: I think the biggest personal change that I've seen has been sort of a minor one, but I've realized that it actually does run quite deeply into life, and it's that I really am more comfortable at night being a nocturnal person, walking around in the dark. Even in my own house or in the creepy basement [Peri laughs] or in other people's creepy basements. I think it's really impacted my comfort level with, you know, trusting yourself and all your intuitions and when fear is real and when it's not real. And I think people really do have so much more than we let on to stuff because I've gone to things like in the night and then gone back to the place and like noticed that I'm walking right by the same exact rock or something. And I'm like, I mean, I tried to go the same direction, but my body has some kind of memory, like from like, how did myself take myself to this exact place? Honestly, just operating more comfortably with less light has been a very liberating feeling. I don't know if we learn it as fear is from movies or what it is when you're little and you do have that fear of the dark thing.

Peri: It's very primal. I mean, we spend so much time trying to light up the darkness, whether it's our car headlights or our, you know, turning the lights on in our houses or even leaving our porch lights on all night.

Amy: It's just oddly satisfying. You know, like this just makes life easier when you take off a layer of worrying.

Peri: I like that, though. It's not like you go out there and try to make the dark more light. You can just become more comfortable in the dark.

Amy: Yeah, absolutely.

Peri: One thing you said earlier was like, these birds love Glacier so much. And I don't know, I kind of got me thinking like, does Glacier love these birds back? And there's like, I think that there's so much effort going into studying them. It kind of makes me maybe say yes now. [Peri chuckles]

Amy: I think so. I think Glacier and the Conservancy has supported the effort seriously over the years, and to me that's just really cool because that is I mean, these birds are impacting a greater landscape, but they need Glacier to nest and survive and reproduce to, you know, keep having black swifts. And then I think the community of people love that because when people are here, they're totally enjoying nature and then hopefully passing that down. I mean, as Montana Audubon too, we are advocates for conservation and it really does take knowing and caring about something to advocate for, especially if it's a policy decision that will impact climate change or something like that. You do have to know the birds.

Peri: [narration] I guess I'm still not sure if you can truly love something you don't know. [haunting violin fades in] But now I've seen a black swift and I think we bonded. And I know I don't want to lose them.

Peri: [in the field] How does it feel?

Amy: They’re still there and that really makes me happy. Actually, to your question of how does it make you feel, when you see them again after ten years, I don't know why, but I still get so excited and I do love them.

Amy: [in the studio with Peri] When we were lucky enough to see that nest today, you get that small little bit of just ultra excitement that they're still there and just knowing that they're there, even though you don't see them all the time, it's just like, gosh, this whole life's happening and we have no idea and that made me brought a lot of joy here.

Peri: We've learned a lot about these birds, but can we ever know very much or will-will they always kind of be a mystery to us?

Amy: That type of thing is so interesting to me. And I think just because we can't exist in their habitat comfortably for much longer than a few hours, I think there is definitely going to always be the part that is just too dark for us to see.

[music builds, then fades to play softly under the credits]

Peri: Headwaters is a production of Glacier National Park and is supported by the Glacier National Park Conservancy. We could not make the show without them. You can learn more about what they do at Glacier.org. Headwaters is made possible with help from Lacy Kowalski, Melissa Sladek and so many people throughout the Glacier community, especially the natural and cultural resource teams. We're grateful for all of you. Our music this season is by the brilliant Frank Waln. The show's cover art is by our sweet friend Stella Nall. Check out Frank and Stella's work at the links and our show notes. Special thanks this episode to Amy Seamen and the whole black swift team. Montana Audubon, Lisa Bate and Kaile Kimbell for all the pickles. Besides sharing this episode with a friend who might appreciate it, you can help us out by leaving us a rating and review in your podcast app. Thanks for listening.