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Source Information Needed:

Name of Author(s). Publication Date. Title of Work. Publication. Pages of the chapter or article. Link to Web page.

1. Quill, E. (2008). Tree Swallow Farmer. (7).

2. Winkler, D. (2008). My Interests. (2).

3. John Thornton. (2009). Tree Swallows. (2:09). 5th January.

4. 4444tresful. (2010). Tree Swallow Chatter Call. (0:28). 23rd June.

5. Peter Gadd. (2011). Tree Swallows at Work.wmv. (1:46). 4th May.

6. 4444tresful. (2012). Intraspecific Competition for Tree Swallow Boxes Increases as More Birds Arrive. (1:22) 4th April.

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2

“When you start banding birds, you can’t help but wonder: where do these birds go?” Wink said.

A man in Cortland, New York, started catching birds Wink had banded, so Wink and his colleagues at the Lab of Ornithology decided to start a swallow and bluebird dispersal study at the state level. With the help of about 60 volunteers, they were able to extend the study area to sites within 400 kilometers of the Ithaca site and continue the project for 11 years.

Turns out that banding birds is actually placing a metal or plastic tag to either their wings or legs. They each have a different number and determine what aspects of the bird's life can be observed or measured. It takes a lot of support to continue a project like this for more than a decade.​

5

“I wanted a few people who I could do a lot with,” Wink said. “At each new site, we learn so much.” Though the sites are currently too spread out to meaningfully study migration, Wink said one day he hopes it will be possible. Martín Quiroga set up the first Golondrinas boxes in Argentina in 2000. After meeting Wink through the Internet and visiting Ithaca three times, he wanted to get involved. With help from students, he now runs the Santa Fe site in Argentina where he studies the White-rumped Swallow. “This project is promising, because we can share ideas,” Quiroga said. “The biology of birds is moving, and you can’t really investigate it if you are working by yourself.”

It's just like Rocking the Boat. Everytime I attend a session, I leave from there learning something new. Knowledge is exciting and just keeps expanding. This is something you cannot corrupt. I really am blown away by several species of swallows such as the White-rumped. The latter sentence is so true. It takes teamwork to actually make good progress. You can't always do everything by yourself.

6

Wink experiences the challenges firsthand. He tried to set up a site in Venezuela with the help of a graduate student. “We put up the nest boxes, and they all disappeared,” Wink said. The local people were borrowing the nest boxes to get parakeets to nest in their own backyards.

Though he could not set up a permanent site in Venezuela, Wink was more successful in Belize, where he worked closely with a nongovernmental organization. But when the money dried up, progress slowed. And after setting up a bug sucker in the country, he found out there was not enough electrical power to keep it running—a problem that was fixed this past spring.

I can relate to this text. At Rocking the Boat, many nest houses were being stolen. We didn't see any of them damaged or on the ground, they were simply gone. It's somewhat irritating that this happens as we don't know what's the motive behind it and what are they to do with the small houses. Money is certainly needed to progress with studies such as these, unfortunately..

1

I am an ornithologist with strong interests in physiological, evolutionary and behavioral ecology. In my present work, I explore the causes of temporal and spatial variation in the life histories of birds, focusing mostly on breeding biology and movements. Though I have an abiding fondness for birds in the Charadriiformes, since the late 1980's I have been focusing on Tree Swallows (Tachycineta bicolor) in my studies of history variation.Swallows are obligate aerial insectivores during the breeding season, and because air temperatures in spring often are too cold for aerial insects to fly, food availability for swallows can go from feast to famine over a few hours with the passage of a cold front.

Professor Winkle seems very attached to his work. It's fascinating how he first started off studying slightly larger birds and now tree swallows. I knew swallows ate insects, but I didn't know what to call them. "Insectivore" seems just right. It's crazy how in one day swallows could be feasting on insects and the next they can't because of the cold temperature during spring.​

2

We did a good deal of work on both natal and breeding dispersal in Tree Swallows in the 1990's with a team of about 100 volunteers around New York and surrounding states. We were never able to fund this work as well as we think it deserved, and I feel that the way forward in studying dispersal in swallows is to develop methods to radically increase our chances of recapturing a given bird. This would allow us to better understand the process of dispersal by allowing us to related differences in, e.g., individual experiences as a chick, to the resulting pattern of dispersal that the individual displays. For some years, we have been working on a "dispersal tag" that would allow us to use modern solid-state technology to dramatically increase the chances of finding a bird once it has dispersed and begun breeding at a site far away from the nest from which it fledged. This sort of tag is one of many that I am working toward with colleagues in BRP and the labs of Professors Molnar, Erickson and Garcia in Cornell engineering.

Natal and breeding could be described as childhood and adolescence for birds. It's good to know that people from around New York and other states in the country volunteered to help work on this project. The word "dispersal" was brought up at Rocking the Boat many times and I'm glad to know what it means. Technology like the one stated in the paragraph that helps find birds once they've dispersed would be extremely useful. Technology never ceases to amaze. I hope this tag is created as soon. The quicker the better.​

2

This work on migration and dispersal gets us thinking about spatial ecology, and this focus takes me back to a very long-standing theme in my research: the basis of geographic variation in life histories. Tree Swallows, with their congeners in the genus Tachycineta, comprise an excellent system in which to explore these questions through the full range of latitudes in the Americas, from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. Starting in the late 1990's, I began thinking of a network of collaborating scientists studying the nest-box populations of Tachycineta throughout the Americas. And now, almost a decade later, the Golondrinas de las America network is finally starting to take off.

Migration and dispersal are two very different things, although similar. When swallows migrate, they leave their nesting area but return to the same place eventually. When swallows disperse, they leave and live elsewhere permanently. This is a good topic to do plenty of research on and I'm sure it takes several years to find the right answers.​

0:04

"Every Fall, thousands of birds go to Cape May County. Some of my favorites are the Tree Swallows. They like to sit on telephone lines. They're usually nice, but sometimes they fight over who gets to sit where."

Tree swallow have been known to be very competitive. They get very defensive when other birds try to enter their nest, and that is especially true when it comes to collecting feathers for their nests, as the rivalry between swallows is pretty intense.

0:52

"They love to eat bugs. They're very good at catching them."

Swallows are known for eating insects that fly, like mosquitoes and such. Bugs can also be related to their diet as they are essentially insects themselves.

1:13

"They spend a lot of time picking at their feathers."

I wonder why this is? Maybe they use some of their feathers for shelter inside their nest boxes?

1:43

"I miss them when they go, but I know they'll always come back next year."

Tree swallows have been known to be migratory. Most of them come back in the same area next time around, while a few disperse and never come back.

0:05

Two swallows appear to be sitting on top of their nesting box, until four other swallows swarm in.

I think the two swallows that were sitting on the ledge were owners of the nest.

0:12

One of the swallows sitting above the pole leaves and sits right in the center of the nest hole.

The swallow does this probably to protect what’s inside the nest box, probably feathers, leaves or twigs. Something of that kind.

0:19

All the swallows in the area disperse, and occasionally a single swallow returns on the pole.

All of the swallows seem to be fighting over that one territory. This is obvious by the way their actions and their chirping.

0:16

A bunch of swallows are flying around water when it appears that a swallow almost dove in.

For a second, I almost thought it was going to dive inside the water, but then I realized that the swallows are eating flying insects around the pond/lake.

0:41

More birds look like they're diving inside the water.

The swallows seem pretty hungry.

1:10

Eight swallows are sitting on tree branches. It looks like they're picking at their feathers and they do this several times.

I wonder if they’re picking at insects on their fur, or are they literally removing their own feathers to store them in the nest boxes? I’m a little confused on what that is all about.

0:03

Four swallows are sitting above a tree box, when one of the birds approaches the nest hole, and another flies above it.

At first glance, they all look like they’re guarding the nest box from another predator..

0:35

Each swallow attempts to enter inside the nest hole as each of them barricade the entrance.

It turns out the swallows are competing over who gets to keep the home first.

1:01

The swallows continue trying to enter the nest hole, this time displaying a more aggressive rivalry than before.

I’m not surprised that this is happening since it’s breeding season for these small birds. Swallows are known for being very competitive.