This summer, Northern Alaska Environmental Center is proud to partner with the Alaska Songbird Institute to support hands-on youth and community science in Interior Alaska. Through ASI’s long-running Tree Swallow Ecology Program, interns and young students are learning about bird migration, nesting ecology, and the importance of long-term ecological monitoring
My name is Molly and I am working with the Alaska Songbird Institute’s Tree Swallow Ecology program this summer. This long term project launched in 1999 and currently monitors about 150 nesting boxes located at Creamer’s Field and UAF. Every year a group of high school interns and youth mentoring students aged 10-14 also participate in the project, encouraging engagement with science through learning about our process of monitoring nest chronology and banding the Tree Swallows. I was born and raised in Fairbanks, Alaska and first got involved with this project as a high school intern in 2021, but I am currently studying biology at an out of state college, and have come back for the summer as a seasonal Tree Swallow bander.
Tree Swallows are a migratory songbird with a very wide range all across North America, with Fairbanks as one of their furthest north nesting sites. Since the summers up here are so short, our Tree Swallows have no time to waste in building nests and laying eggs. Despite the cold winter, the Tree Swallows beat me back home in their spring migration from the southern part of North America, and when I finally got back to Fairbanks in mid May, I was greeted by their high pitched song and nests that were almost ready for eggs. Tree Swallows are cavity nesters, meaning they nest in enclosed spaces, usually hollow trees or human made nesting boxes. Their feet and bodies are specially designed to be able to perch on the edge of a hole and duck inside the cavity.
Tree Swallows construct their nests by first bringing in dry grass and arranging it in a thick ring, then collecting feathers they find dropped from other species and strategically placing them on top of the grass. When checking the same nesting box for several days in a row, I often notice that the feathers change positions from day to day, as if the inhabitants fuss around with the placement in their spare time. This summer, most females nesting in our boxes started laying eggs in the last week of May, laying one egg a day until a final clutch size of 5-7 was reached. Tree Swallows incubate their eggs for at least two weeks, meaning we will be seeing many newly hatched swallows during the second and third week of June. As things start ramping up and we begin to catch and band the adult birds, I am excited to see who has returned from previous years, and who is new to nesting in our boxes at Creamer’s Field and UAF.