P.E.I. tree swallows get new homes and new tracking, thanks to watershed groups

Tree swallows in central P.E.I. have some new homes, thanks to five watershed groups in the area.

The groups have put up dozens of nesting boxes for the insect-eating birds as part of astandardized tree swallow monitoring program, with financial support from the P.E.I. Wildlife Conservation Fund.

The programwill let the watershed guardians safely remove,band and replaceadult and baby tree swallows with a view to better tracking the migratory population in the future.

The Kensington North Watershed Association piloted this project last year, and has 26tree swallowboxes distributed around thearea that group covers.Forty more were built over the winterfordistributionto the other four watershed groups, including the Trout River Environmental Committee (TREC).

Last year the groups were able to band only 70 birds, but so far this year they have carried out the delicate procedure on more than 150 swallows.

"Tree swallows are part ofa declining group of birds called aerial insectivores, and they're declining due to a number of different reasons, lack of habitat being one of them," said TREC executive director Shayla Steinhoff.

"They need very large trees that have cavities built into them, usually from woodpeckers. But because we don't have a lot of these large trees around, what we do is we build these nesting boxes...

"They'll make their nestsand they'll raise their chicks in them. And we go in and we band the adults first, when the chicks are still in their eggs," Steinhoff said.

Steinhoff said they wait to put the tiny identification bands onone legof each offspring until right before the chicks fledge, the stage when they have enough feathers to allow them to take flight.

"Then hopefully next year we'll have some tree swallows returning that we have banded, and this helps us track their population, [to see] if it's declining."

Banding on the run: The quest to boost P.E.I.'s tree swallow population

3 months ago

Duration 3:01

Five watershed groups in central Prince Edward Island are closely monitoring tree swallows in their region, putting up nesting boxes and carefully banding the birds that occupy them. CBCs Nancy Russell spoke to Shayla Steinhoff, director of the Trout River Environmental Committee, and wildlife technician Fiep de Bie about how they hope the project will protect the species.

Easy access for banding

Steinhoff said that out of the 10boxes her committee monitors in habitatattractive to tree swallows, it hasmanaged to bandbirds from five of them.

Five boxes were notoccupied by a breeding pair this year. The other box did have nesting birds but the chicks fledged and the family left the nest before they could be banded.

Older-style nesting boxes are gradually being replaced withthe new banding boxes.They'rethe same dimensions as the nesting boxes, with the entry hole the right size and shapefor tree swallows, but thelid is hinged and there's a clasp on the side so that human observers can open the box twice a week to check on the chicks.

Steinhoff said they hope to expand the project, building more banding boxes and banding more birdsnext year.

"They really do help grow the population so that is one of our goals to provide them this habitat through nesting boxes and increase their nesting success... Hopefully we'll see their populations start to bounce back."

Installing a nesting box on your property, it's a really good thing, because you're providing habitatand you don't have quite so many black flies and mosquitoes hanging around. Shayla Steinhoff, Trout River Environmental Committee

Steinhoff said Islanders interested in getting a tree swallow nesting box can contact the watershed group in their area; a map showing the territory of all the groups is available on the P.E.I. Watershed Alliance website.

"During the breeding season, they can actually eat about 2,000 insects a day," she said of the graceful blue, white and black birds.

"So installing a nesting box on your property, it's a really good thing, because you're providing habitatand you don't have quite so many black flies and mosquitoes hanging around."

Quickness is the key to banding

Wildlife technician and bird banderFiep de Biehas been part of the tree swallow project, and took a CBC News team along on a recent banding operation.

"You just don't want to disturb the nest for too long," she said."As you could see, there was a parent around, and we just don't want them stressed or more stressed than they are. So we try to do it fairly quickly andin a safe manner."

De Bie said it will take time to get a good handle on what is happening with the tree swallow population on the Island by tracking where the banded birds show up.

"There's some studies done from 1966 to 2019, [and] the population has declined 30 percent," de Bie said, though she added: "It's not a species at risk bird, yet."

We band all those little chicks, and if they come back next year and we have recaptures, then we know, "Hey, they survived another year."Fiep de Bie, wildlife technician and bird bander

As well as sheer numbers, a banding project can tell them something about the population's productivity as well.

"We band all those little chicks, and if they come back next year and we have recaptures, then we know, 'Hey, they survived another year,'" de Bie said.

"Then you can actually track their lifespan, their age."

She said there are many reasons why swallow numbers have been declining.

Pesticides could be one, "because they are of course insectivores. They eat a lot of insects [so] they're affected by that," de Bie said.

"Climate change can play a role as well, because this year we were actually quite early. It was one week earlier that we started banding in comparison with last year."

The bandinginformation doesn't stay on the Island. The Canadian Wildlife Service has a bird banding office in Ottawa to co-ordinatecontributionsto adatabasecovering Canada and the United States.

"The North American Bird Banding Program database holds over 70 million banding records and over 3 million encounters dating from 1908," the office's website says. "Birds banded in Canada are most often encountered in the U.S.A., Canada and Mexico, but they are regularly encountered in Central and South America, the Caribbean, Greenland and Iceland, and occasionally encountered in Russia, Europe, Africa and Asia."

That kind of data gives people like de Biea better handle on what is happening with tree swallows.

"We know their migration patterns. The ones that are breeding in the eastern area of this country are actually migrating to Cuba and Florida," shesaid."So that is what information you can find from from banding."