Meeting Abstract
Chimney Swifts (Chaetura pelagica) are highly maneuverable social birds notable for roosting overnight in chimneys in groups of hundreds or thousands of birds. At dusk, birds gather in large numbers from surrounding areas near a few suitable roost sites. They then enter a very small aperture within a very short time, with the whole flock employing an orderly, but dynamic, circling pattern, even as winds shift and light levels decrease. Such repeatable, reliable behavior in a convenient urban area with fixed landmarks provides an excellent opportunity to use multi-camera videography to measure three dimensional kinematics of natural flight behavior, in the field and under challenging lighting conditions. We present results from automatic tracking of every bird in the flock, discuss kinematic and information metrics appropriate for analyzing the tracks and modeling components of the behaviors, and provide comparison with Cliff Swallow field 3D kinematics to examine differences between strongly and weakly ordered group flight behaviors.
