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The number one thing you should know about Black Swifts is that pursuing them always leads to an adventure. You’re not guaranteed that when seeing most species—no birder ever regaled you with the thrilling story of the time they saw a House Sparrow—but as one of the most mysterious and difficult-to-find birds in North America, finding Black Swifts is never a snooze.

My first attempt to chase them involved hiking deep into and up a canyon in western Colorado. I was dripping sweat and breathing heavy when our party reached our destination: , a crystal-blue, waterfall-fed oasis tucked into the canyon. The fact that there were no Black Swifts around was almost forgotten amidst the scenery. (My lifer Williamson’s Sapsucker and Band-tailed Pigeon took some of the sting out, too.)

Seeing the Black Swift’s close North American relatives, Chimney and Vaux’s Swifts, is decidedly unadventurous. They come to us, fluttering over cities and towns through summer and early fall, chirping constantly to alert you to their presence. I’m not complaining, I love seeing those swifts. It’s just that I saw my lifer Vaux’s Swift from a rental car in dead-stop Los Angeles traffic . . . an adventure I won’t be telling the grandkids about.

On the flip side, Black Swifts are unobliging; they make you work for them. Their May-to-September range is limited to smidgens of the Mountain West, southern Alaska, southwestern Canada, southern Mexico, and the Caribbean. At half a foot, with a foot-and-a-half wingspan, they’re the largest resident swift species on the continent—but they hunt so high up that you can barely see them. They follow “blooms” of insects around the landscape, up to 25 miles from their nest sites, meaning they aren’t reliably spotted in the same areas. Like most aerial insectivores, they’re fast as heck and hard to get a good look at, let alone a photograph. Like I said, unobliging.

The birds are just barely easier to see on the nest. Black Swifts breed in remote areas on steep sea cliffs or behind alpine waterfalls. Constructing nests in these places is a good strategy when trying to raise one-shot babies—few predators can navigate the slick, mossy walls, and there aren’t many humans creeping around either (TLC ). Consequently, the first Black Swift sites weren’t discovered until the 20th century, much later than most other North American birds.