There are now Ebird hotspots for Swifts Over Houston, with separate hotspots for Whole Foods, Pershing School, Pinewood Wetlands (Clear Lake), St. Paul's Church, and Sutton Elementary. All the data from our counts has been entered into eBird where it will be accessible to all.
Spreadsheet with count data and graphs for the Pershing/Whole Foods Market/St. Paul's and Dayton Swift Counts, 2007-2009
Spring-Summer 2010 Counts: We will resume swifts counts in mid-March 2010. We plan to monitor the swift towers at Pershing Middle School, Whole Foods Market, St. Paul's and the Imperial Sugar stack in Sugar Land.
-- Pam Smolen, Swifts Over Houston Count Leader
Count Locations:
- Whole Foods Market in Bellaire: 4004 Bellaire Blvd.
- Pershing Middle School in Bellaire: 3838 Blue Bonnet Blvd.
- St. Paul's United Methodist Church on Main St. and Binz, across from the Museum of Fine Arts. St. Paul's invites the public to watch the Chimney Swifts any time between late March and early November as they descend into the chimney near the Fannin Street Courtyard.
- Imperial Sugar stack in Sugar Land. The Refinery address is: 198 Kempner St, Sugar Land, TX 77498. From Houston, go
south on I-59 (towards Victoria), exit US-90 Alt and go west about 2 miles. The
Refinery will be on the right.
Tips on Counting Swifts by Paul and Georgean Kyle: When counting Chimney Swifts at roosts, the numbers can become overwhelming -- especially as the numbers continue to climb as we move
toward fall migration over the next few weeks. What we have found to work
quite well is to use an athletic lap counter. These are available at most
sporting goods stores. You can tally without taking your eyes off of the
swifts.
When the numbers of swifts are relatively low, a direct count can be made --
one click per swift. At sites where the numbers exceed several hundred (or
the entry rate is high), make one click per 10 swifts and multiply the end
number of clicks by 10 for the total. It works really well if several
counters can average their counts at the end.
Chimney Swift Counts
Graph prepared by Pam Smolen
