The Ontario Purple Martin Working Group was formed to determine the status of the purple martin in Ontario. The most recent Breeding Bird Atlas survey results indicate that the martins have declined in various regions of Ontario by 21% in the last 20 years. They estimate the population to be approximately 40,000.
The Ontario Purple Martin Working Group works with the Ontario Purple Martin Association, whose mandate is to reach out to Ontario landlords at large about the difficulties the purple martin is experiencing and how we as a working group might address them.
Ontario Purple Martin Working Group Members
John Balga Essex, Ontario
Phil Carnie Morpeth, Ontario
Richard Carr Walpole Island, Ontario
Robert Daubs Forest, Ontario
Al Hamill Harrow, Ontario
Paul Hamel Belcraft Beach, Ontario
Carl Pascoe Walpole Island, Ontario
Rachel Powless Walpole Island, Ontario
Mary Wilson Leamington, Ontario
Annual Indices of Population Change for the Purple Martin In Ontario From The Breeding Bird Survey data (1970-2009)
Bird decline shocks experts
Birds that eat flying insects are in a shocking and mysterious decline, says the co-editor of the new Atlas of Breeding Birds in Ontario.
Windsor Star, March 7, 2008
Birds that eat flying insects are in a shocking and mysterious decline, says the co-editor of the new Atlas of Breeding Birds in Ontario.
“It is an alarm bell,” Gregor Beck, a wildlife biologist and the book’s co-editor, said this week.
The atlas, created after five years of research and employing 1.2 million individual bird records from Pelee Island to Hudson Bay, found most of the birds that eat flying insects declined 30 to 50 per cent in the last 20 years. The birds include some swallows, the common nighthawk, the whip-poor-will and the chimney swift. The decline was the biggest shock that came from the research, Beck said.
We need to be very concerned, he said. …more…