Priority Sites and Swift Parenting:
The monitoring plan for the remainder of the breeding season
While our official roost monitoring evenings are done, we do continue monitoring throughout the nesting season. You can keep monitoring your usual chimney or help us confirm use by swifts at our priority sites. Occasional observations as well as consistent monitoring are both valuable.
Barb elegantly puts in words the benefits of these different approaches in a past blog post: “Along the way your monitoring sessions will add puzzle pieces to the overall picture. Infrequent, short sessions gather puzzle pieces with snippets of information; these are very good for verification of site use. Frequent, lengthy sessions harvest more robust puzzle pieces that have more information in them; these are necessary for identifying stages of nesting.”. Basically, doing what you can, when and where you can, is all helpful and helps us bring together the countless pieces of the greater Chimney Swift puzzle.
Keep reading for a detailed breakdown of how to help us monitor priority sites, as well as how to monitor a nesting chimney during breeding season.
Priority sites
Below is a list of our priority sites to monitor in 2023. We want to know if Chimney Swifts are using these chimneys. Confirming use of these chimneys by swifts (an entry or exit) will confirm them as protected ‘residences’ under the Proposed Chimney Swift Recovery Strategy. Monitoring at these sites can be done at any time of day – the key is to see an entry or an exit by a swift.
Here’s how you can help: Take a look the list, pick a site or two that you would like to check out, go take a look to see if there any swifts using this chimney and let us know what you see! Once we get a report from someone saying they’ve observed an entry/exit at a site, we will cross that site off our list and let everyone else know that this site no longer needs to be monitored. We will be posting an updated list on the blog weekly, so that volunteers can see what sites still need to be monitored and which sites have been ‘checked off’. A collaborative scavenger hunt of sorts, with important implications for Chimney Swift conservation!
Three of these sites have already been crossed off our list, which is exciting! Amanda observed a swift entering the chimney at 2150 Portage Avenue on May 24th, as well as three swifts entering the chimney at 155 Traill Avenue on June 3rd. Blair observed two swifts entering the chimney at 340 Provencher Boulevard on June 7th. These three sites have a line across them in the list below, to represent that they have been ‘crossed off’ our list.
| Settlement | Neighbourhood | Location | Site | Observer |
| Manitou | . | 338 Hamilton St | St Andrews United Church | |
| Morden | 325 Stephen St | Pembina Hills Art Centre | ||
| Selkirk | . | 420 Main St | Lord Selkirk Hotel | |
| The Pas | . | 380 Hazelwood Ave | VIA Rail Station | |
| Wasagaming | 106 Buffalo Dr | |||
| Winnipeg | Daniel McIntyre | 222 York Ave | Brink’s Canada | |
| Winnipeg | Daniel McIntyre | 222 York Ave | Brink’s Canada | |
| Winnipeg | Daniel McIntyre | 803 Erin St | Elan Designs and Upholstery | |
| Winnipeg | Daniel McIntyre | 520 William Ave | Living Gospel Church | |
| Winnipeg | Daniel McIntyre | 520 William Ave | Living Gospel Church | |
| Winnipeg | Daniel McIntyre | 33 Kennedy St | Lincoln Towers Apartment | |
| Winnipeg | Daniel McIntyre | 100 Adelaide St | Immigrant Centre Building | |
| Winnipeg | Daniel McIntyre | 348 Assiniboine Ave | Redboine Apartments | |
| Winnipeg | Daniel McIntyre | 91 Albert Str | The Old Market Autonomous Zone | |
| Winnipeg | Daniel McIntyre | 239 Colony St | The Florida | |
| Winnipeg | East Kildonan/Elmwood | 325 Talbot Ave | Riverwood Church Community Firehall | |
| Winnipeg | Fort Garry | 1022 Pembina Hwy | Cambridge Hotel | |
| Winnipeg | Fort Rouge/East Fort Garry | 411 Stradbrook Ave | Lancaster Apartment | |
| Winnipeg | Fort Rouge/East Fort Garry | 277 River Ave | Royal Oak Court Apartments | |
| Winnipeg | Fort Rouge/East Fort Garry | 105 Clarke St | My Place Realty | |
| Winnipeg | Fort Rouge/East Fort Garry | 272 Cockburn St | King George Court | |
| Winnipeg | Fort Rouge/East Fort Garry | 118 Scott St | Apartment | |
| Winnipeg | Fort Rouge/East Fort Garry | 280 River Ave | Moxam Court | |
| Winnipeg | Fort Rouge/East Fort Garry | 245 Bell Ave | Children’s Education Funds Inc | |
| Winnipeg | Fort Rouge/East Fort Garry | 834 Grosvenor Ave | Eugene Apartments | |
| Winnipeg | Fort Rouge/East Fort Garry | 444 River Ave | Augustine United Church | |
| Winnipeg | North End | 935 Main St | Ukrainian National Federation | |
| Winnipeg | North Kildonan | 25 Valhalla Dr | Valhalla Gardens | |
| Winnipeg | River Heights/Fort Garry | 465A Lanark St | Lanark Gardens | |
| Winnipeg | River Heights/Fort Garry | 465D Lanark St | Lanark Gardens | |
| Winnipeg | River Heights/Fort Garry | 1055 Grant Ave | Grant Wilton Apartments | |
| Winnipeg | River Heights/Fort Garry | 890 McMillan Ave | Milan Apartments | |
| Winnipeg | St Boniface | 1310 Archibald St | Niakwa Park Plaza | |
| Blair Reid | ||||
| Winnipeg | St Boniface | 864 Marion St | No. 9 Fire Paramedic Station, 864 Marion Street | |
| Winnipeg | St Boniface | 847 Marion St | Euro craft office furnishings | |
| Winnipeg | St Boniface | 99 Birchdale Ave | Nordale School | |
| Winnipeg | St James | 2160 Portage Ave | Stanley Park Apartments | |
| Amanda Shave | ||||
| Amanda Shave | ||||
| Winnipeg | St James | 2415 Portage Ave | Essex House, pest cage | |
| Winnipeg | St Vital | 531 St Mary’s Rd | Riverside Billiards |
Nest site monitoring
Many of you have been regularly monitoring chimneys used by Swifts to nest. If you are interested, we encourage you to keep monitoring these chimneys at the frequencies and durations that work for you. Monitoring during the nesting season can be done during the daytime. Data such as the number of entries and exits per hour, as well as the amount of time spent inside the chimney between entries/exits are useful in determining which phase of nesting the Swifts are currently in.
We are now into the ‘nest building’ phase of the breeding season, during which a breeding pair of Chimney Swifts will build a small cup-shaped nest by bringing small diameter twigs into the chimney, using their sticky saliva to glue these twigs together to form a nest. The Swifts will continue to build the nest throughout the egg laying and incubation phases. There is a lot of variability in the activity across nest sites but in general, if there is nest building at a site, you will see daytime entries by a single Chimney Swift or a pair flying together at a frequency of around 1-2 entries and exits per hour. The duration-in/between-visit time intervals are variable.
Once the eggs are laid, incubation begins. Here is Barb’s great explanation from a past blog on what incubation can look like in terms of activity:
“Incubation is the toughest nesting stage to pin down with respect to the date of onset. Start dates are nearly impossible to establish unless you have a nest cam or viewing port inside a tower etc. But it is possible to identify if the Chimney Swifts are incubating by using monitoring data. In ascending order of good, better, and best, I use 3 criteria which usually indicate that Chimney Swifts are on eggs. For monitoring sessions of at least 60 minutes, signs of incubation are: 1. % attendance, or time spent in the chimney, is > 50%; 2. A duration-in interval <10 min. (for an entry where a partner is not obviously flying nearby and doesn’t enter); and/or 3. A classic incubation exchange i.e., an entry followed by an exit 30-120 sec. later. Classic incubation exchanges take place 1 X hour (give or take a few minutes) at a site with 2 breeding adults.”
Once the eggs hatch, the Swifts move from the incubation phase (general range of 18-21 days) to feeding their young before fledging (general range of 28-30 days).
It is important to keep in mind that many other factors can influence Swift behaviour. Bad weather or other disturbances may cause Swifts to enter a chimney during the daytime, even though they are not nesting. Also, there are always exceptions to the general ‘rules’ for timing and duration of the different nesting phases and their associated activities.
The same can be said for trying to interpret the movement and behaviour of Swifts during migration, as they arrive and disperse throughout the breeding grounds… As many of you who watched the same site across several different nights know, the number of Swifts entering a chimney during the roosting hour can be extremely variable from session to session. I will finish this week’s blog post by sharing some words from Winnie Wake (from London, ON) about interpreting the results of our swift counts during this period, with). Winnie shared these thoughts (along with the beginning caveats) with Barb and has given us permission to share them with you:
“I would caution that my proposed interpretations for our region might not necessarily be fully applicable to yours. We also notice that numbers can vary at the small sites that we refer to as nest-only chimneys. When half a dozen swifts show up at some of these, we do not know who the extras are – extra migrants or surplus of wanna-be helpers or some other category. With swifts, I have learned there are always exceptions to defy any generalization I may try to invent to explain their behaviour.
During spring migration, the big unknown in interpreting swift counts at various chimneys is the turnover rate. How many days do migrating swifts stay in London before resuming their journey north (or dispersing to local nest chimneys) and, while here, to what extent do they move around among London chimneys? Personally, I do not think a significant number of migrating swifts move around to the extent that total numbers stay relatively the same for a number of days, though I think that some swifts likely do move around among chimneys.
I think a lot of our swifts pass through in waves. This could be waves of different sizes that arrive and move on after spending varying numbers of days in town. The wave theory is also visible at a finer level. During a roost watch, we often notice a group of swifts arrive, circle and enter. Then the sky will be empty for a while until the next group arrives, often from a different direction. We will also sometimes notice swifts passing over a roost chimney in numbers that are larger than the number that finally enters. Presumably these birds are checking out the possibilities before making a decision on where to spend the night. I have a hunch a number of our birds go directly to nest chimneys without first spending time in local roosts. We also do not know how many other London chimneys that we are not regularly monitoring might be occupied by roosts in a particular season. Most of the roost chimneys we monitor are within a km or so of other monitored chimneys. Almost all of the 18 chimneys have hosted roosts at some season or time in the past (only 3 FSA chimneys have not), but, in a given spring, summer or fall season, it is unusual for there to be more than four to six active roosts.”
We’d love to keep receiving reports of what you’re seeing, or not seeing! Even if you are not following the official roost monitoring protocol, you can enter your reports on our datasheet (available here on our website). As always, send us an email at mbchimneyswift@gmail.com if you’ve got any questions. Stay tuned for next week’s blog for more monitoring updates!
-Marissa
