Save our swallows with Nature Canada

Everyone loves swallows, the busy little birds that zip around the barn and over the hay fields, scooping up insects like moths and mosquitos. Have you noticed fewer swallows lately? It’ s not just you– there actually are fewer around. In fact, swallow populations across Eastern Canada are crashing at dramatic rates.

Nature Canada, one of our country’ s oldest national nature conservation charities, is taking action to Save Our Swallows. This new project, funded by the Ontario Trillium Foundation, aims to help these beloved birds back to recovery. As many of these species live in rural Ontario and are dependent upon farms for their survival, we are looking for your help and support to Save Our Swallows. We are teaming up with the National Farmers Union and other farming groups to promote beneficial practices for these at-risk species. Examples of these practices include the provision of safe nesting habitat in barns, mitigating threats in barns and out buildings, providing foraging habitat that is close to nest sites, building alternative nesting habitat nearby when necessary, and weaning ourselves off pesticides that directly or indirectly impact these species.

Over the course of this two-year project, we will be developing and sharing our beneficial practices online and promoting them at farming events and demonstration sites in three catchments along the Southern Great Lakes: Quinte-Kingston-Rideau, Brant-Haldimand-Norfolk, and Essex- Kent-Lambton.

Our goal is for at least 250 farmers in these areas to implement beneficial practices for swallows on their farms. To kick-off this project, we would like you to complete a short survey on your current practices and knowledge of swallows. This will provide us with a baseline against which we can measure progress. Please join us to Save Our Swallows! Visit nfuontario.ca to take the survey. Your responses are extremely important to helping us understand how we can help you.

For more information, please contact Ted Cheskey, Nature Canada’ s Naturalist Director at tcheskey@naturecanada.ca