Red Listed!
Hey Voxters, I just found out some serious news - My study bird, the chimney swift, has been put on the Red List.
They will be given the status of Near Threatened. This is huge - before May 14th, they were listed as Least Concern. And what serendipity - I'm going to hand in my proposal this week!
The IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) is a collection of population counts for plant and animal species. It tells the status of each species and is the most thorough inventory in the world. They work with 11,000 scientists in 160 countries to collect the data. The listing, while sad, will give my study a lot of juice (and maybe even some funding!) The report shows that the chimney swift has declined by 30 percent over the last ten years. Here is an IUCN press release and an article from the Guardian.
I'm actually glad about this because we already knew they were threatened - but had not been given the proper status. BirdLife International just released their report on May 14th, so the IUCN page for the swift will not be changed until later this year. I've learned much since I first began studying chimney swifts 2 years ago - here are some things we can all do for them, including some advanced stuff. Wheeeeee! :D
*Skip the pesticides: they may be causing a worldwide decline of neotropical migrants. And if you don't like bugs, check this out: one chimney swift can eat 1,000 insects a day. Their favorite bugs? Mosquitoes, gnats, termites and flying ants. Trust me, you want these guys around.
*Support your local churches and historic districts. These places are more likely to have old buildings with large, uncapped chimneys. In Quebec, 47 percent of chimney swift nest and roost sites were in church rectories.
*Plant a tree. Keep your property natural and allow some stick piles. Anything that will reduce global warming and keep the air clean is good - trees absorb pollutants and filter the air. Good for all of us.
**Consider a chimney tower! You can also read this document by COSEWIC if you want to know even more!
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Comments
You're working so hard to help them. ((Ellie))
My lawn is a mess...if they come here they'll find lots of welcoming stuff.
I hope you get funding out the wazoo and get famous and then invite me to come along on research expeditions!
When the timberwolf was recently taken off the endangered list, I started to worry, actually. So in a way, I'm also glad that the swift will now be placed under the protective 'wing' of conservation groups and scientists - I will include you in this group.
Do swifts nest en masse? Do they need huge spaces for their families? Unfortunately, I have nothing like that near me - I wish we had something that would lure them to California.
;) Wow, thank you. It's nice to think I will be part of the team. Yes the wolf status is awful but don't worry, I'm pretty sure it's being taken to court.
They nest in pairs but the unmated ones sometimes nest in the thousands in one chimney. They need a minimum diameter of 25 cm so the juveniles can spread their primaries. They also need unlined, uncapped chimneys (so they can cling to the side on brick or stone - they don't really have much of a foot so they can't perch, they can only cling to vertical surfaces) that are in decent conditon and retain ambient temperatures.
You guys have the vaux swift (pronounced like Vox)! They're nearly identical to chimney swifts except they actually use trees, lots of it in pileated woodpecker habitat. But they also use chimneys! Although reluctantly. They are so similar to chimney swifts that I used studies done on them almost exclusively for my first thesis ideas to look for chimney swifts in old growth habitat!
Evelyn Bull is the lead researcher on vaux swifts and I can point out some great articles by her! Wait, here's a few -
Summer roosts Chimney behavior (not by Bull) and the best one - by Bull
You may already have them!! Is your chimney open? They look like bats almost (but bats won't be out during the day) they are very dark birds with sickle-shaped wings and they make a fantasitcally loud chittering noise. They fly extremely high up, fast and erratically (fun birds to do a survey on, LOL)!! :P
And they almost always fly in groups of 3 or more.
Let me know if you see any!
Ha - what the heck good does that little checkbox do?? I always find it kind of annoying (I mean, am I saying the post is good? The announcement is good? Sheesh! I wouldn't comment on the post if it weren't good in some way! LOL)
But yes - it's good and bad, more so good because the listing can only make things better for the birds. Awful for me after seeing the announcement - before I was able to be in some level of denial that the swifts were in trouble. It kind of sunk in after I read it, who knows how long they'll be around. We don't even know what's causing their decline yet.
But I'm trying to be optimistic. Good! :D
Thanks so much Geo. Cheers, sister. ;)
Stupid pesticides - I thought I even heard there was a reversal of a ban on one of the nasty ones (trying to remember which article that was....)
Yes! That BBC article is based on the Birdlife report. It's a nice hummingbird. Sad - it was just discovered and now it has no chance of surviving because of the cocaine trade.
Those birds are probably eating insects off the lawn during the day - cool!
;) Nice - thank you, Tom!. Hopefully we figure out the root cause soon - I've met some great scientists working on it.