It was another successful season of tree swallow nesting at the Drake Landing off-leash dog park this year.

This past spring and summer marked the third season for the nest boxes, which were installed on park fencing to attract swallows as part of the town's biological control initiatives for flying insects.

Town of Okotoks Parks Manager Christa Michailuck says additional boxes were installed at the park this year, resulting in more swallows moving in to the area and successfully nesting.

"This year, we increased the number of boxes to 20 from 14 last year," Michailuck says. "We had one of our volunteers build the additional six boxes and we ended up having tree swallow families in 12 of the 20 boxes and fledging about 50 nestlings."

She says they weren't sure whether the additional boxes would attract more swallows, so they were pleased to see the increase in fledgling numbers due to the new boxes. Michailuck explains that currently the boxes at the Drake Landing off-leash dog park are properly spaced, so there are currnetly no plans to add more nesting boxes to that location.

The swallow nesting season usually gets underway in the spring, once the birds return here from their southern migrations over the winter.

"They start arriving around the first week of April, or at least they did this year," Michailuck explains. "They select their boxes and there's the first signs of nesting activity by about mid-April and by the second week of May, 13 of the boxes had nesting material and we saw the first eggs in the last week of May."

She adds that all of the swallow chicks had fledged the nests by mid-July, noting that time is the most active for the swallows as they swoop over the off-leash dog park and the Drake Landing storm pond in their search for insects to feed their chicks.

Due to support from volunteers and the success of the initiative, the popular swallow nesting program is expected to be continued for next year.

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