While most chimney watchers have reported their swifts as long gone, on Tuesday our Selkirk monitoring crew observed a total of eight swifts entering two of their chimneys!
If you have any current sightings, or if have some earlier reports to share, please let me know.
There are still some reports to come in, but this season we have monitored 47 sites, 29 of them in Winnipeg. 34 of the sites had fewer than four swifts at peak occupancy, six sites had over four occupants, and seven sites had no reported occupants. Of those chimneys with swifts, several only had one reported bird or had very erratic occupancy. Once again, the highest chimney occupancy was in the Dauphin roost with a maximum of 67 and second place was a Selkirk smokestack with 48.
The seasonal summary may be viewed on our web site at http://www.mbchimneyswift.ca/Documents/monitoring_data.pdf
Recently, we got some publicity in Steinbach’s The Carillon newspaper for our recent (and damp) Saint Adolphe chimney watch. A scan of the article is available at http://www.mbchimneyswift.ca/Documents/carillon_2011.pdf
Frank Machovec