Maritime Swallow Research

The species

From the 1970s to the 2000s, the four species of swallows found in Canada’s Maritime provinces — bank, cliff, tree and barn swallows — have suffered serious declines. In the case of bank swallows, populations have plummeted an astounding 98 per cent. Find out more about these species.

The project

Wildlife Preservation Canada is funding research by former Canada’s New Noah Tara Imlay to identify the causes for swallow declines in the Maritimes. The two main culprits being investigated are changes in the availability of the insects that swallows feed on and threats on migration routes and wintering grounds. Tara and her team have set up nest boxes for tree swallows and established a nest monitoring and banding program for all four species across sites in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. This enables the researchers to closely monitor breeding success and survival and relate it to information on food availability. Meanwhile, geolocators are being used to track the birds’ behaviour and migration routes. In addition, blood and feather samples are collected from returning birds. These samples are analyzed to identify wintering areas and provide insights into wintering ground conditions and their impact on return rates and reproductive success.

Results

In 2014, Tara and her team monitored nests at 18 sites in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, checking for timing and success of breeding. The team banded 696 swallows and retrieved 11 geolocators from returning birds for analysis at Dalhousie University. In 2015, they banded over 700 chicks, captured over 450 adult swallows and recovered three geolocators from recaptured birds. To date, research suggests that three of the four swallow species have begun breeding earlier than usual in recent years. Pairs that breed later in the season face a shortage of insects during nestling development that can negatively impact young birds.

Impact

The data collected in this project will help us to understand why steep declines in swallow populations are occurring, giving us the information we need to plan conservation efforts for these species. It also has broad implications for the conservation and recovery of other aerial insectivores across North America. For more details about this project, check out our field blog. Help us save maritime swallows! Contribute to Wildlife Preservation Canada today. Want to do more? Find out how you can help birds at risk.