Hi Everyone, I just thought I would share my success attracting chimney swifts to my backyard this summer. I am the Wildlife Biologist for the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe Department of Natural Resources. We are partnered with the Minnesota Audubon to promote chimney swift conservation. I have been experimenting with attracting swifts to artificial nesting "towers" such as the one seen in the picture. When these towers are placed, it can be several years before the swifts recognize them as nesting structures. Knowing this I wanted to speed the process. I have 4 towers on the reservation and one tower at my home residence. The 4 on the reservation are unoccupied, my tower at home quickly attracted swifts. Here's the story. I played a chimney swift vocalizations CD and within an hour I had a group of 5 swifts investigating the sound. Amazingly, in the next few hours I watched as the swifts played around the tower. Hesitantly, the would pause in mid-air, take a peek into the tower, chatter in joy, and fly around the yard at about 100 miles an hour in a formation like a chinese kite. Later that day, a swift plunged down the tower and another followed. They both flew out and revealed themselves as a mated pair by locking into a glide with their wings held in a V-formation. It was quite an accomplishment to attract swifts in one day! I believe the recording played a major role. Ron Windingstad with Audubon MN and I are planning to make a recording for distribution to those who have or plan to build a tower for swifts. I encourage anyone who loves to house birds to consider building a chimney swift tower, they are a lot of fun! Information for tower construction can be found at chimneyswifts.org.
Here's a link to my little backyard pals: http://www.flickr.com/photos/41189...@n08/?saved=1 ---- Join or Leave mou-net:http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives:http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
