Monitoring Recap August 22-28
We’re back with another weekly Chimney Swift recap! Things are certainly slowing down across the province, with many sites recording zero swifts this week during monitoring sessions. In many cases, our aerial friends appear to have begun their southward migration. In fact, Steering Committee member Frank paid a visit to our southern neighbours this past weekend and attended a “Swift Sit” near Minneapolis hosted by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and the Urban Bird Collective. Over 600 swifts roosted in a large chimney at a local high school. Could some of these birds have been our Manitoba swifts stopping for the night? As Chimney Swifts can travel up to 800 km per day during migration (about the distance from Winnipeg to Minneapolis), it’s likely they could have been!
Though some swifts have migration on their minds, some of them are still holding on here in Manitoba, especially at the usual sites at the Selkirk Mental Health Centre, and Lower Fort Garry. We also received reports this week from the whole summer in Souris and Wasagaming, so we’ll recap those sites as well. Although we’re not quite done with the season yet, I still want to extend a huge thank you to everyone who has monitored a chimney this summer, we truly couldn’t do what we do without our incredible group of volunteers! With that, let’s get to our recap.
Carman
Rhonda did a roosting hour watch at the Memorial Hall on August 22 and reported no swifts in the area. During her previous watch on August 9, she had frequent entries and exits, which we interpreted as adults feeding young inside the chimney. Hopefully in the time between watches the young fledged and the family is now on their way south!
Dauphin
The swifts also seem to have flown the coop (or chimney) in Dauphin. Ken watched the Harrison Computer Services chimney on August 23, and Pat watched the Hong Kong Café the next evening, with both of them reporting zero swift sightings during their watches. For Pat, this observation was 10 days after she observed two parents feeding young at the Café. We’re hoping that this was another successful nest at this site!
Selkirk
As in previous years, the Selkirk swifts are still going strong, even as swifts in other communities start to head south.
Patti and Dennis were out on August 23 and August 28 watching their usual two sites: the Infirmary chimney and T03. At the Infirmary, they observed an entry, then two exits two minutes later just before 8:00 pm. About 45 mins later, two swifts re-entered the chimney to roost. A pretty quiet watch compared to the action of the previous week! On the 28th, the action was back! Patti and Dennis reported quite an entertaining watch with two swifts continuously circling the chimney from 8:04 until they entered at 8:14 pm. These entries were also reported as fluttering entries – could they be fledglings from the infirmary chimney? This one has tested our interpretative skills this summer, we’re looking forward to the cleanout in a couple weeks to put the final pieces together.
At T03, Patti and Dennis observed six roost hour entries, some of which made fluttering entries. By their session on the 28th, the Tower was quiet, with no entries or exits. It seems the family has left the Tower.
A whole crew was out on August 26 watching several SMHC sites. We had Nia and Linda at the Yellow Brick chimney and T04, while Fred and Nettie were at T01. At Yellow Brick, it was a quiet evening, with no activity at the chimney. T04 was quiet as well, with a single swift entering the Tower to roost.
Fledglings were also present at T01. There were six total entries into the Tower, with three of them being slow and fluttering.
Souris
Katharine sent in datasheets from nine(!) different sites that she watched while visiting Souris throughout the summer.
Starting with Dimitri’s Taverna (formerly the Chocolate Shop Café), Katharine saw one daytime exit during a short monitoring session on June 8, then 3 entries and 3 exits a month later on July 2. There were long gaps between entries and exits, so I’m inclined to say the swifts were in the process of building their nest. Katharine also noted V displays performed by the swifts during this session, a sure sign that the swifts were in the courting phase.
Up next is the east chimney on the Hillcrest Museum, one of our 2026 Priority Sites. Despite two sessions on June 7 and July 24, no swifts were seen interacting with this chimney.
Kowalchuk’s Funeral Home was another site on our Priority List this year. Katharine watched this site on June 7 and again on July 2, but again saw no entries or exits into the chimney.
Katharine watched a third Priority Site on June 9, a private residence on 5th Ave W. This one was another bust, with no swifts seen using the chimney.
On June 8, Katharine watched Lagasse’s Studio of Fine Arts from her hotel room across the street. She saw up to five swifts flying overhead but none of them interacted with this chimney.
On June 9, Katharine visited the Rock Shop, where she saw some promising daytime activity with one entry and an exit about 15 minutes later. Unfortunately, any nesting activity appeared to have stopped when Katharine next visited this site on July 26. She thought perhaps this was due to the repeated violent weather experienced in Westman this summer.
During the roosting hour on July 24, Katharine watched St. Paul’s United Church, and observed eight entries into the chimney. This could have been either a recently fledged family coming home to roost for the night, or unrelated birds coming together to roost before starting their migration. With only one observation at this chimney for the summer, it’s hard to tell what happened at this site.
The action at the Whistling Donkey Pub ‘n’ Lounge was perhaps the most exciting of all of Katharine’s Souris watches. On June 8, she had two entries and two exits, again with quite a bit of time spent in the chimney, which makes me believe they were in the nest building stage. She returned to this site on July 23 for a roost hour watch, and had a total of twelve entries and eight exits! This time, the interval between entries and exits was much shorter, suggesting that these were adult swifts feeding their young. This is supported by the note that Katharine included on this datasheet – that rapid chittering could be heard upon entries! This isn’t the first time this summer that we’ve had reports that young swifts could be heard by the observers outside the chimney. We’re hoping the young swifts had a successful fledging from this site!
The final site that Katharine watched in Souris was another private residence on 5th Ave W, the ‘White House’. She watched this site on July 25, and it was another exciting one, with five entries and four exits during the 1 hour, 40 min session. This was another site with short intervals between entries and exits, suggesting the swifts were feeding young inside the chimney.
Katharine’s final visit to Souris this summer was on August 25, when she reported that there were no swifts to be seen or heard anywhere in the skies above town, whereas they were hard to miss during her earlier visits. She even drove around looking and listening, but ultimately concluded that they had left for the season. Thank you, Katharine, for spending so much time this summer chimney-side in Souris!
St. Adolphe
Barb and Rob conducted a roosting hour watch on August 23 at the St A Church and had zero swift sightings. Barb was expecting to see at least a couple of migrating swifts from other communities, as she noted small numbers of Purple Martins and Barn Swallows in the morning, but alas, there were no swifts this evening in St Adolphe. With that, the season appears to be over for the St A flock. There’s potential for a few migrants to show up at the Church as a rest stop on their way south, but as Barb noted, those will be random and likely low numbers.
We will be conducting chimney clean outs at the end of September in St Adolphe, which will fill in more of the picture of what this year’s nesting looked like across town. We’ll be back with an updated summary after those clean outs, so stay tuned!
St. Andrews
Similar to the Selkirk sites, the swifts in St Andrews are still holding on! At the Lower Fort Garry Furloft, two adult swifts were highly focused on feeding young inside the chimney. Gerald conducted roosting hour watches on August 23 and August 27 and noted high feeding rates during both visits. He noted that the swifts were not flying around during these monitoring sessions, and that the only activity was when they entered and exited the chimney. In our last monitoring recap, we told the story of the fallen nest rescue that took place at the Furloft earlier in August. We’re happy to hear that the parents are still feeding and that this rescue mission continues to be a success story.
Meanwhile, juveniles were spotted entering the Men’s House chimney on both August 23 and August 27. On the 23rd, Gerald noted that a juvenile made a number of dives and passes at the chimney at 8:06 pm, before making a slow, fluttering descent into the chimney two minutes later. On the 27th, Gerald observed similar behaviour by two individual swifts. The first made a fluttering entry, and the second made multiple fluttering descents almost backwards, missing the chimney. Eventually this second juvenile did manage to enter the chimney for the night.
Wasagaming
Earlier this week, we received the 2026 Wasagaming monitoring data from the Parks Canada staff in Riding Mountain National Park (RMNP). The Parks staff monitored both the RMNP Visitors Centre and the Stowaway Inn for each of the four NRMP evenings in late May and early June. There was an additional daytime monitoring session at the Visitors Centre on August 12. Following the trend of the last few years, there were no swifts seen or heard within the Wasagaming townsite. Although there were no swift sightings in town, the Parks Canada monitors made the most of their sessions, often educating curious visitors about the swifts.
We’re unsure why the swifts no longer find the Wasagaming chimneys attractive. The last time the swifts were recorded using either site was in 2019. One theory is that they’re roosting and nesting in natural habitat in other areas of the Park. Despite not hearing or seeing swifts in town this year, the Parks staff did note that they heard swifts at the Agassiz Day Use area on the east escarpment. This area also has numerous Chimney Swift sightings on eBird, despite having no known chimneys in the area. This leads us to believe that they could be using large hollow trees in this area. However, finding exact sites within a large, remote forested area is like finding a needle in a haystack, so the mystery of the Riding Mountain swifts is one that remains unsolved.
A huge thank you to Parks Canada staff Trinity, Allery, Stephen, Sophia, Dylan and Autumn for your monitoring efforts this summer!
Winnipeg
East Kildonan/Elmwood
Manitoba Métis Federation Staff Brookelynn and Alexia conducted their final monitoring session at the Henderson Hwy Tower on August 27. Based on the images from the camera inside the Tower, Alexia concluded that the swifts left for their migration on Saturday, August 22, so no swifts were seen or heard during the final monitoring session. It was another year with a successful nest at the site, with camera images showing two adults and two juveniles. Thank you to all the MMF staff who participated in weekly monitoring again this year!
St. James
Breanne tried to continue her impressive streak of crossing sites off this year’s Priority List but came up short during her evening session at the Carillon Towers and Marner Apartments on August 26. Except for the Portage Ave traffic, all was quiet in the area. The only interaction with either chimney was when a crow perched on the lip of the Carillon Towers chimney for a few minutes before carrying on. Thanks to Breanne for your monitoring efforts and for confirming swift use at seven of our priority chimneys this summer!
St. Boniface
Blair did an evening watch at the Springs Christian Academy in St B on August 28. Like the other Winnipeg sites monitored during this week, he observed zero swifts in the area.
Overall
It’s getting quiet in the skies (and in my inbox) as more and more swifts start their southward migration. We’ll be back next week with updates from the few sites that are still active, then we’ll be starting up post-season chimney clean-outs and data summaries. Even though the swifts are leaving Manitoba, we’ll have no shortage of swift stats to share!
A huge thank you to our dedicated volunteers for all the time spent chimney-side this week and throughout the summer. Be sure to follow us on Instagram and Facebook for more updates on all things swift!
Thanks for reading!
- Mackenzie (Program Coordinator)
