News from south of the Perimeter!

Away from roost monitoring, Barb Stewart, with the help of her husband Rob has been watching 5 chimneys in St Adolphe for over a decade. Many of you are familiar with the names of these chimneys, if not the places. Barb updated us on the current status in St Adolphe, and we decided to share it with all our volunteers to see the type of monitoring you could go on to do in your area, and also read into some of the behaviours you might detect in your swifts. Over to Barb:

Now for St A: on Sunday, I spent a frigid morning watching Main St and Brodeurs over a long noon hour; the occasional single bird was about. The best sighting was Fr Michaud who waved at me from the front steps of the church. He is so thrilled to have swifts working on the next generation again! Going back for 7:10 to 9 PM Sunday night, there still was no daytime action at Brodeurs or the Church.

Monday at St A was a GLORY moment however! Arrived around 12:30 at Main St to find a couple circling about; 1 dropped into the chimney. Nice timing. Cast an eye over to Brodeurs where 4 were moving between the cemetery and the RM – 2 swifts dropped into Brodeurs. Even better to confirm a pair on site! Off to the Church to water planters. Two swifts were circling the steeple then moved low to repeatedly fly through the dead branch ends on a tree to the east. Ah hah – twig collecting. The pair moved over the chimney and 1 entered while the other stalled at the rim and then flew off. Wow.