Shareen Strauss
Mt. Shasta Area Newspapers
It felt a lot like the Alfred Hitchcock horror movie “The Birds” when hundreds of unusual birds filled the lobby of Hotel Dunsmuir last Monday.
Hotel owner Mark Juarez said he and some co-workers left the hotel around 9 p.m. and returned about an hour later on April 26 to find 600 swifts in the lobby and hallway.
Although Juarez identified the birds as chimney swifts – a common eastern bird – the identification wasn’t confirmed by an expert. The birds could also have been Vaux’s Swifts or Black Swifts, which are more commonly found on the west coast and look similiar to chimney swifts.