Naturalists get funding for downtown chimney webcams

Sault Naturalists have secured $50,000 in provincial funding to install webcams in two downtown chimneys, allowing researchers and the public to observe migrating chimney swifts that roost there.

The Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forests grant will put webcams in large chimneys at the Sault Ste. Marie Court House and the Canada Post building across the street, Jennie Pearce, coordinator of a study of local chimney swifts, told SooToday.

One camera will be mounted at the top of each chimney, pointed inside.

Other cameras will be installed inside the chimneys.

The cameras will permit scientists to study behaviour of the little, cigar-shaped birds.

Pearce spoke to us Sunday night as about 100 bird enthusiasts gathered on the front lawn of the courthouse to watch about 120 swifts enter the post office chimney at dusk.

It was the first-ever Swift Night Festival in Sault Ste. Marie, which hosts one of the largest populations in Canada of the threatened birds.

Sault Naturalists hope to set up a website where the public will be able to observe the birds each night.

As many as 2,000 swifts drop into the post office chimney at dusk each night this time of year.

They originally roosted in the courthouse chimney, which was capped in 2013, forcing the birds to move across the street to the Canada Post chimney.

The courthouse chimney was uncapped last year but the swifts didn't return there.

Since SooToday and Local 2 ran stories about the birds last week, small crowds of about a dozen people have been gathering each night near the courthouse cenotaph to see them.

Earlier Village Media coverage of this story:

2,000 threatened birds cram into one downtown chimney

Chimney swifts spotted on Queen Street

(PHOTO: The first-ever Swift Night Festival in Sault Ste. Marie was held the evening of May 24, 2015. David Helwig/SooToday)