Volunteer to count, monitor these aerial acrobats
Jun 18, 2009 - 04:30 AM
You expect to find nature in the country, far from city lights. Well, here's a great opportunity for anyone living near the downtown core of any community in Durham Region: a blitz on swifts!
Chimney swifts are small dark birds that dash through the air over the old part of town in summer, soaring and fluttering in exhilarating aerial displays as they chase each other about. They're described as "a cigar with wings" for good reason, given their short stubby bodies and tails and pointed, swept-back wings. Anyone who grew up "in town" in the last half century is sure to have fond childhood memories of their constant chittering calls, a familiar sound of a southern Ontario summer.
Chimney swifts are a key part of any community's insect-control strategy, each one gobbling up scores of flies, beetles, wasps, flying ants, etc, every day. But like so many aerial foragers, their populations are plummeting by almost 50 per cent in places, according to recent Ontario Breeding Bird Atlas data. The statistics are so alarming that chimney swifts have been declared a threatened species.
In response to the worrisome news, Bird Studies Canada is starting up a network of volunteers to count and monitor swifts on their "nesting grounds," frequently in the heart of downtown. Chimney swifts are appropriately named, given their practice of nesting inside brick chimneys of old buildings and houses. Before settlers cleared the forests, they nested in big hollow trees or crevices in cliffs. Gluing twigs together with their saliva, they paste a small, half-saucer shelf against an inside wall and lay four to five white eggs. Their nests are not a fire hazard.
All a volunteer has to do is scan the skies by day and watch where your local swifts are going. If you happen to spot one zipping into a chimney, go back at dusk and count how many swifts enter to roost for the night. During breeding season, that will likely be one pair, both of which share the work equally, plus a few non-breeding "helpers" that roost nearby.
But swifts are communal and like to be together. A month after the eggs hatch, the babies start following their parents on exploratory flights, a little parade circling about the sky. In fall, great numbers gather, roosting at night in comfy dark chimneys and eventually making their way south to the upper Amazon, where they overwinter.
Taking part in this summer's "swift blitz" is a great way to help one of Ontario's birds at risk. It's an ideal activity for curious kids, with their keen eyes and ears, to do with grandparents, with their knowledge and love of chimney swifts.
For more information, and how you can volunteer, check www.birdscanada.org/birdmon/chsw, or phone Elisabeth van Stam at 1-888-448-2473 ext. 173.
Other nature queries: 905-725-2116 or mcarney@interlinks.net
Durham resident Margaret Carney, in addition to writing nature-appreciation columns, has also published several children's books.
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