Another season of swallows has passed, and the Town’s nest box program has been deemed a success.
For the third summer, the Town had volunteers checking in on nest boxes located around the outside perimeter of the off-leash park in Drake Landing. This year the program increased from 14 to 20 boxes, thanks to volunteer Chris Mills building an additional six boxes to add to the fence.
It was his first year working with the nest boxes, and the avid bird-watcher says he hopes to be involved again next spring.
“It’s kind of rewarding,” said Mills. “It’s interesting if you’re a bird-watcher to see when the birds arrive, when they start nesting, how many you get. It’s just an ongoing interest.”
In early spring, the boxes are cleaned out and in good condition, and then volunteers watch until the birds arrive from their winter migration in the south, which is usually in April, he said.
When the swallows have returned, the boxes are checked once per week to see whether there are signs of nesting activity.
“Once the nesting activity starts, then we monitor to see when do they lay the eggs, when the eggs hatch, and then how long does it take before the birds fledge, or leave,” said Mills.
This year, 12 of the 20 boxes were used by tree swallows and approximately 50 young swallows fledged, he said. Two boxes were used by house sparrows, and there were no bluebirds or wrens seen in any of the boxes, he said.
Mills said he was surprised to see there were no issues with dog-walkers being so close to the nesting boxes.
“It doesn’t seem to bother the swallows at all,” said Mills. “Sometimes the swallows bother the people. You do get the occasional aggressive swallow that takes off after people if they feel they’re getting too close to the nest. But it’s not a very balanced fight – they just swoop at you.”
Okotoks parks manager Christa Michailuck said the number of boxes occupied by swallows was higher than expected this year.
“We expected we had saturation with the number of tree swallows in the area and we weren’t sure we’d get any more occupants, so it’s good to see we attracted more birds to the area,” said Michailuck.
The Drake Landing off-leash park is ideal for nesting boxes because of its proximity to local lakes for water sources and being in a fairly open area, with some groves of trees nearby. It meets all the criteria for tree swallows, she said.
There are also six bat boxes at the off-leash park – three poles with two boxes each – but no bats have taken up residence in the two years since they were erected, she said. It can take up to five years for bats to move into boxes, so she said the Town is still optimistic there will be bats on-site in the next couple of years.
Both box programs were initiated as a means of natural insect control at the park, she said.
“Generally speaking, there’s not a shortage of nesting sites for birds in town,” said Michailuck. “This program came about in that the off-leash park is there and it’s largely a non-mowed area, and where there’s long grass there’s mosquitoes, and we wanted to try to increase the biological control in the area through birds and bats.”
She said there haven’t been any vandalism issues with the boxes in three years, and there have been no reports of conflicts between off-leash park users and the nesting birds or fledglings on the ground.
The volunteer program has been strong as well, which makes it easy to run the program, she said.
“It hasn’t been a burden on the parks department to keep it going, which is great, because it’s almost a two-kilometre walk around the off-leash park to monitor the boxes, so it’s a bit of a time commitment,” said Michailuck.
