Month: March 2019

A quick update on the coming wave of swifts. The latest eBird report has a swift being spotted in Frankin County, Ohio earlier today. Brave bird! Most recent reports do seem to still be concentrated along the Gulf of Mexico and Florida, with some early birds also reaching Arkansas and Kentucky.

Monitoring Priorities – the National Roost Monitoring Program (NRMP)

What is the NRMP?

Since 2013, our core volunteer monitoring participatory program has been via the National Roost Monitoring Program (NRMP). The NRMP was initiated by Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) in Quebec. The idea is that volunteers operate across provinces, monitoring roost chimneys on 4 set dates.

According to the methodology, a roost is 4 or more swifts recorded entering a chimney between one hour before sundown, and 30 minutes afterwards. We report these results to ECCC. Although many of our chimneys do not support a roost of 4 swifts, we still encourage volunteers to monitor as their chimneys during this period. The information we are generating from all our chimneys is building up an impressive picture of Chimney Swift distribution and behaviour in Manitoba. This IS critical information, so even if your chimney does not support larger numbers of swifts, your data is still very useful and very, very appreciated by MCSI.

When is it taking place in 2019?

Each monitoring period begins one hour before sundown and end usually 30 minutes afterwards, unless in those rare cases, the swifts remain outside the chimney after this period. In 2019, these dates are set as:

• May 22
• May 26
• May 30
• June 3

As mentioned in our previous blog, MCSI would also like to add a couple of extra monitoring dates if possible, one before the NRMP and one after. Due to the long weekend, our first date would normally be May 18, but we are encouraging flexibility, and for those unable to go out on the weekend, we are saying May 16 or 17. The final MCSI extra night is four days after the NRMP on June 7.

Priority Sites for 2019

We are trying to encourage as much participation in the program as possible. Therefore, we have selected a list of priority sites across towns and cities in Manitoba. Our aim is, to within reason, to encourage monitoring at these sites on all 4 evenings. Obviously in some places, Melita and Souris stand out, we might not be able to do this, but we are ambitious to try! In the list below, those sites underlined and italicised did not receive regular NRMP monitoring in 2018. Our aim is to get someone to fill these gaps. For those who volunteered in 2018, our sincere thanks, and we will be in touch soon about prospects for 2019. In the meantime, if you are looking for a roost site to monitor, then take a look below. If you do not live near one of these sites, contact us, and we will identify a site for you to monitor.

Brandon
Orange Block

Carman
Carman Memorial Hall

Dauphin
213 Main Street

La Broquerie
Paroisse Saint Joachim

Otterburne
Providence College

Melita
Antler Historical Museum

Morden
Lucky’s Chinese Restaurant

Portage la Prairie
Trinity United Church

Selkirk
Mental Health Centre, large stack

Souris
Murphy’s: An Irish Legacy (94 1st Street South)
St Paul’s United Church

St Francois Xavier
St Francois Xavier Catholic Church

St Jean-Baptiste
Paroisse Catholique St-J-B

Steinbach
Bethesda Hospital

Stonewall
Main Street Site

Wasagaming
RMNP Visitor Centre

Winnipeg – Downtown
303 Assiniboine Avenue

Winnipeg – Fort Garry
Pembina Flag Shop

Winnipeg – Fort Rouge
915 Corydon

Winnipeg – River Heights
378 Academy

Winnipeg – St Boniface
690 St Joseph Street

Winnipeg – St James
Assiniboine School
Moorgate Apartments, 2187 Portage Avenue
New Silver Heights, Portage Avenue
St Ann’s Church, Hampton Street

Winnipeg – St Norbert
St Norbert Catholic Church
St Norbert Behavioural Health Centre

What happened in 2018?

In 2019, MCSI will continue to support this program. In 2018, we did so by monitoring 68 sites in 16 communities in Manitoba, a phenomenal effort! You can look at our results at https://www.mbchimneyswift.com/Documents/NRMP20132018.pdf.

It would be amazing if we can keep the level of monitoring up in 2019. So please let us know if you are willing to take on a new site, and we will find a suitable site for you!

— Tim Poole

Announcing Dates For MCSI Monitoring in 2019!

We are now almost two months from the long-awaited arrival of our favourite chimney dwellers (Santa inclusive). There has been much happening behind the scenes with MCSI. Most importantly ahead of May, we wanted to make sure everyone has some important dates in their diaries for the coming season.

National Roost Monitoring Program

MCSI will once again be participating in this monitoring program with other provinces in Canada. There will be four nights, and monitoring begins one hour ahead of sundown, and ends 30 minutes after sundown. We will, in the coming weeks, produce a priority list of sites to cover, mainly to make sure all the larger roosts are counted each night. The dates selected for 2019 are:

• May 22
• May 26
• May 30
• June 3

MCSI Additional Roost Monitoring

As with previous years, we encourage everyone to start monitoring their chimney whenever they can. We have added two more official nights. The first is a bit unusual in that there is a choice of options. May 18 would be our first option. However, this is the Saturday of the long weekend, and people like to go away! So, if you are unable to monitor on May 18, but would still like to participate, we are encouraging you to go out on May 16 or 17.

The final MCSI extra night is four days after the NRMP on June 7. We will also do a final public roost gathering on June 11. This is usually at Assiniboine School, but we may do something different in 2019. Watch this space!

Wednesday Night is Swift Night!

Following the official roost nights, we had great success and support in 2018 from volunteers, mainly on the Wednesday night monitoring. We will continue this in 2019!

More Places to Find Swifts

In 2018, we found swifts in 7 new places in Manitoba. We need to follow up on some of these, as we found swifts but either only have one record of a swift entering a chimney, or in some cases, we have still to find an active nest or roost site. These places are:

• Baldur
• Birtle
• Dominion City (we had one confirmed site, but a spare pair of swifts in 2018)
• Emerson
• Eriksdale
• Neepawa
• Pilot Mound

We also have found swifts in a number of other places over the years, but we are looking information on whether there are swifts now. These places include:

• Manitou
• Powerview-Pine Falls
• St Anne

Finally, we have some strong possibilities, some visited in 2018 but with no swift sightings, but which we would like to follow-up, and some which were suggested by the original computer modelling which gave us some of the other places. These include:

• Vita
• Crystal City
• Dunrea
• Ninette
• Killarney
• Virden
• Gilbert Plains
• McCreary
• Swan River
• Gladstone
• Benito

This is just some thoughts of places to look, and we will be coming back to this asking whether there are volunteers willing to spend time watching for swifts. However, if you have other suggestions, we are all ears, and open to ideas!

Where are the swifts?

Lastly, a question came to us just two days ago about the latest swift comings and goings on eBird. The current year map is reproduced below for Chimney Swifts. As you can see, there was a record from Florida, this being of three birds on February 20^th. This looks as though it was a very early record and while we are not disputing this, it probably does not reflect the current state of migrating swifts. More pertinently, is the record of 30 birds on March 4^th, recorded at the Panama Rainforest Discovery Centre. From what we know of winter range, this suggests we have some larger groups of swifts on the move! A second record of 121 swifts was recorded on February 21 in Panama (the red flag below the highlighted one).