Parks Canada is listening to bank swallows at night to help boost the birds' population
CBC
Parks Canada is launching a new project this fall to listen for a species of tiny birds that make their home in the red cliffs of Prince Edward Island National Park.
Hailey Paynter, an ecologist at Parks Canada, says the agency will use autonomous recording units (ARUs) to determine if bank swallows are roosting in particular wetlands in the park.
"This is a piece of equipment that essentially has a microphone on it and you set it up to record at specific times and it captures bird calls, which then can be identified," Paynter said.
Bank swallows are a common sight along the shores of P.E.I., swooping around the red cliffs where they build their nests.
The birds were upgraded to threatened status under Canada's Species at Risk Act in 2018. Since then, conservation groups have been keeping a close eye on their numbers.
Many groups do annual surveys, counting the nest holes along the shoreline. Paynter said the audio monitoring is just another method of detecting the birds' presence.
She said bank swallows often congregate in roosts at night, for a few reasons: defending themselves against predators, thermal regulation, and to exchange information with each another.
"We're working to understand more about potential roost sites within the national park," Paynter said.
Birds that nest in the park normally spend their summers in Central America and Mexico.
But the bank swallow's population in the park is declining.
Last year, Parks Canada counted 450 nest holes during its annual census.
"In 2017, we had almost double that," Paynter said.
After two significant post-tropical storms in less than a decade — Dorian in 2019 and Fiona in 2022 — Paynter said erosion has cost the swallows some of their habitat within the park.
The Belfast and Area Watershed Group has been monitoring bank swallows since 2019.