Roosting Chimney Swifts in the Maritimes

[Chris Merkord]

From the Birding Community E-bulletin, August 2014:
 
ROOSTING CHIMNEY SWIFTS IN THE MARITIMES

We've reported in the past on Chimney Swift monitoring efforts, including activities in the Canadian Maritimes that were launched in the summer of 2011:
http://refugeassociation.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/sbc-jun11.pdf

Maritimes SwiftWatch, a citizen-scientist monitoring and conservation program, brings together volunteers and community groups as stewards for Chimney Swifts. SwiftWatch participants in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia count Chimney Swifts at roost sites on four scheduled dates in spring and opportunistically through the summer months, identify nest and roost sites throughout those seasons.

The project has discovered that roughly 40 percent of the estimated Canadian Maritime Chimney Swift population roosts at just three schools: Middleton Regional High School in Middleton, Nova Scotia; Temperance Street School in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia; and Tobique Valley Middle High School in Plaster Rock, New Brunswick.

This spring, Bird Studies Canada unveiled a "Meet the Chimney Swift" interpretive panel and installed outside the Middleton Regional High School. The school's chimney is one of the Maritimes' most important roost sites, regularly hosting more than 250 swifts. The new sign combines creative student artwork with conservation messaging and stewardship suggestions for this the species, considered threatened in Canada and listed as Endangered by the provinces of Ontario and Nova Scotia.

Find more on SwiftWatch here:
www.birdscanada.org/volunteer/acswifts/