Saturday May 19th will be our first monitoring evening of 2018. We hope everyone is fired up and ready to go. Just a quick note on what to expect. Our protocol is to begin monitoring 1 hour ahead of sundown, and end 30 minutes after sundown. I will be using this website to get my times: https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/canada/. For tomorrow, aim for the following times, depending on where you live:
Winnipeg: sunset 9:13; start 8:13; end 9:43
Brandon: sunset 9:24; start 8:24; end 9:54
Selkirk: sunset 9:13; start 8:13; end 9:43
Portage: sunset 9:18; start 8:18; end 9:48
Melita: sunset 9:13; start 8:13; end 9:43
Dauphin: sunset 9:30; start 8:30; end 10:00
There are certainly more swifts around than earlier in the week. A pair have been spotted by Barb at the church in St Adolphe, Robert and Gerald have been watching the giant stack in Selkirk, with up to 8 being counted on a single night, and John has hit the jackpot at Assiniboine School, a cool 74 diving into the chimney on Wednesday evening. For those who have never seen a large roost before, John’s description is certainly worth a read:
I was birding at Assiniboine Park and watching the sky for swifts but saw none. On my way home I saw three swifts from the foot bridge flying east along the river. When I got to Assiniboine School there were three swifts flying over the building. The number of swifts steadily grew as they all flew around the area swooping closer and closer to the chimney until the spectacular mass entry 21 minutes after my arrival. Numbers were hard to count when flying as they were coming and going but I certain there were at least 40. By counting in groups of 5 as they entered the chimney I believe I got a reasonably accurate count of 60 within a few seconds and a few more after that. It was a spectacular sight for my first visit to the school.
Last night (Thursday), David in La Broquerie spotted a large number of swifts over the lagoon at 5pm, but saw none during a roost watch – a cold, wet evening probably packed the swifts off to bed early for the night.
We still have lanyards, if anyone would like one. They look very smart, and are well worth having with you. Please email us if you would like one (or more), and we will mail or deliver them.
Finally, data sheets! Here is the link to the datasheets (pdf, Word). If anyone would also like to submit their data online, you can also copy and paste the information below into an email.
Manitoba Chimney Swift Initiative -Monitoring Report 2018
| Date (DD/MM/YY): | |
| Location: | |
| MCSI Site No: | |
| Daytime or Roosting hour* | |
| Time of Sunset if Roosting Hour: | |
| Monitoring Start Time: | |
| Monitoring End Time: | |
| Start Temperature (Celsius): | |
| Observer(s): | |
| Contact Information for Primary Observer: |
*Roosting hour is 1 hr before sunset and 1/2hr after sunset
| Please record the time of each entry and exit and how many swifts were involved. | Comments
Any unique observations regarding swift behaviour or local disturbances |
||
| Time | Entry or Exit? | No. of swifts | Comments |
| 21:45 | Entry | 2 | Example only |
| 22:02 | Exit | 1 | Example only |
| Total witnessed entries: | |
| Total witnessed exits: | |
| Maximum swifts in chimney: | |
| Maximum swifts seen in the air: |
Good luck everyone, and let’s hope we get lots of swifts tomorrow evening!
– Tim Poole and the MCSI Steering Committee
