Our last known Chimney Swifts have departed for the season! I wanted to start out this blog by giving a huge thank you to all of our Chimney Swift monitors this year! Your work is so important to the swift population in Manitoba. With your help we are able to monitor swift populations, monitor the use of our new Chimney Swift artificial tower design in Manitoba, find active Chimney Swift chimneys that are in need of repair that we can use our funding to restore back into good shape, and to help further inform our own knowledge about Chimney Swifts!
That all being said, I have a few last monitoring results to report, and a hint of a few last Chimney Swift mysteries that we hope will be solved soon…
First a quick flight off to Souris from earlier in the season. Jeff Higdon was in Souris back on August 7th and had some pretty neat Chimney Swift sightings! Jeff was not in Souris to Chimney Swift watch – but he ended up getting quite a sight. While walking around town Jeff noted, “Over the hour or so that we were wandering around the swinging bridge and Victoria Park area my max counts went from 8, to 11, to 20-ish, to about 30… Lots of foraging in the area of the bridges and what seemed like some directed movements towards the north when we saw the largest numbers…”. Souris is an important site for Chimney Swifts in southwestern Manitoba as the number of chimneys compared to other towns of equivalent size and age is phenomenal.
A flock of swifts foraging up HIGH overhead! Photo by J. Higdon.
Next, we will head off to St Joachim Church La Broquerie for Frank and Jacquie Machovec’s monitoring session on the evening of September 1st. They saw no activity in the little chimney, but quite a bit in the large chimney! Two swifts were using the large chimney, with several entries and exits taking place over the course of about an hour before both of the swifts settled in for the night about 40 minutes before sunset.
At the St Andrew’s Lock and Dam Maintenance Compound Gerald Machnee watched the two chimneys on the evening of September 1st. Like Frank and Jacquie’s experience in La Broquerie, all of the action that Gerald saw was focused on the one chimney. Gerald describes the first bit of action at the south chimney as an “attempted entry, dove past the chimney awkwardly”. A minute later the swift appeared to actually make it into the chimney, and after four minutes left again. One swift was seen flying over the north chimney (which could have been the same swift as it was out of the south chimney at that point). In the end no swifts entered and stayed the night in either the north or south chimneys before it got too dark for Gerald to see, he had assumed the one swift went elsewhere to roost for the night.
The story continues at Selkirk as well. On August 30th Nia Massey, Linda Adie, Robert and Donna Hempler and Gerald Machnee camped out at the Selkirk Mental Health Centre once again. They found that the swifts had cleared out from the Yellow Brick Chimney and the Infirmary chimney (both of which we think successfully raised young based on monitor observations). However, the odd Chimney Swift behavior was still taking place at the stack replacement tower… eight entries and six exits in 90 minutes, with three swifts ending the monitoring session in the chimney. The mystery of possibly young swifts hatched late from that tower still continues….
Tim Poole was back to watch the stack replacement tower again on September 9th in the evening. The plan was to see if all the birds had left, and if so, to open up the chimney cleanouts (or access hatches as the towers are not real chimneys). By accessing the chimneys we can look up to see if there is a nest, or, if the nest has fallen naturally, we can collect unhatched eggs, fragments of eggshells, etc. to piece together what has occurred. Naturally though, we will not open the hatches to disturb birds if they are still around and using the tower. So Tim did his monitoring session and to his surprise there were still birds around the stack replacement tower! Five entries and two exits in 90 minutes this time, still by three birds.
Next Gerald came back to try his luck a couple of more times! On the evening of September 11th there was a change in the air. This time there were only two swifts, and they entered the tower at 7:20 pm and 7:24 pm and stayed there. Gerald then came was September 13th and he finally saw no swift activity! He did mention, “However, I would not say 100 % gone as there was intermittent light rain from about 2:30 PM to 4:00 PM. There is a possibility they could have gone in and stayed.”
The next ones to try their luck Chimney Swift watching at the stack replacement tower were Rob and Barb Stewart on September 14th during the day. Once again, no swifts were seen. Gerald’s last trip to confirm the absence of swifts was on September 15th, and they are officially reported as left on migration now!
Last year the swifts cleared out of Selkirk on September 12th, so they were pretty bang on with their timing! Stay tuned for a future blog post when Tim finally gets to open up the tower and (maybe? hopefully?) solve the mystery!
Quillaq, the Chimney Swift Questing Dog, has gamely volunteered with Rob and Barb Stewart a number of times this season. Here is Qilliaq and Barb at the best vantage point for the stack replacement tower at Selkirk Mental Health Centre.
Gerald Machnee was at Lower Fort Garry for the evening of August 31st for a monitoring session. He saw no swift activity. This zero-swift event was particularly exciting to us! Why? From following along in past blogs, you’ll know that the state of swift nesting has been precarious in past years at this location, with the nest tending to fall. This year we had installed a false chimney wall for the swifts to use to hopefully give them a rougher surface to build a nest on for increased grip. We were quite certain we had one successfully fledged young this year (Rob and Barb Stewart identified a young swift by its full set of wing feathers at a time when adult swifts were moulting) and thought we had two young based on observations by monitors. With Gerald’s sighting of no more swifts roosting at night it meant we could finally open the chimney and see what we could piece together of the Chimney Swift story in the chimney!
Who appears in chimneys in September? Not old St Nick, but instead the intrepid Joanne Tuckwell! She took one for the team to try and see if she could figure out exactly where the Chimney Swifts nested in the chimney. Photo by A. Shave
So we gathered up our same crew that installed the false wall (Joanne Tuckwell from Parks Canada, Rob and Barb Stewart, and myself) along with some Parks Canada staff from Lower Fort Garry and headed out! The first thing we saw was that the nest had still fallen this year. From the pattern of poop on the false wall and real walls of the chimney, we could tell that they had nested above the false wall we installed. We found no intact eggs (so all eggs hatched). Right off the bat, we found three egg’s worth of eggshells (so three young hatched). Later on, while Barb continued to search through the debris from the bottom of the chimney, she found two more egg’s worth of eggshells. This leads us to five eggs hatched successfully.
What it looked like when we opened up the chimney at Lower Fort Garry. Photo by A. Shave
On a sadder note, we did find three deceased young. The young had passed away at at-least two different ages, so we are not sure what went wrong. We do know that Chimney Swift young do have quite a high mortality rate normally, and that this year was likely challenging for the swifts due to the prolonged hot and dry weather. However, on a positive note, it also means that the swift family was able to successfully raise two fledglings this year! This is a great feat for this site, the first success here in several years.
The eggshell fragments found in Lower Fort Garry. Photo by Rob and Barb Stewart.
So that wraps up the monitoring for the year, but as I mentioned, we certainly are still finishing up our detective work for the season. Tim Poole will be opening up the artificial chimney towers at Selkirk Mental Health Centre, and I will be heading to Assiniboine Park Zoo next week to open up that tower as well! So stay tuned!
-Amanda
