The final report for the 2003 field season of inventorying waterfalls for
nesting black swifts is now on the web page
http://home.pacifier.com/~neawanna/BLSW/BLSW.html

First, I want to say muchas gracias to the approximately 100 people who
volunteered to help in this regional project. The birding community in Oregon and
Washington has once again shown tremendous support in gathering important data
on one of the least known species in the Pacific Northwest. The commitment
and skills of northwest birders is truly amazing, and I am very appreciative of
your interest in advancing our knowledge about birds and bird conservation.

I am still working on an interactive map that you will be able to click-on a
waterfall and then go to the database to get all the information about each
visit. Hopefully, that should be on the web page sometime in May.

I am planning on coordinating regional follow-up work on black swift again
this summer. The effort will likely focus on waterfalls that were not visited
in 2003, additional looking at sites that maybe didn't get enough coverage in
2003, and more coverage at sites with birds to get more solid info on numbers.
I will announce this and post the information on waterfalls to be visited
sometime in May.

Finally, I have posted below some excerpts from the report that summarize the
numbers on black swift waterfalls. Bottom line is that this effort probably
added about 12 new sites in OR and WA that will be important for the
conservation of nesting black swifts.....hopefully next year we can find a few more!

One hundred and three participants (>90% volunteers) spent 513 hours in
observation of 82 waterfalls primarily in Oregon, Washington, and Alaska. It is
likely that an equal amount of time was spent by participants in travel to and
from the sites. Forty-four of the 82 waterfalls were visited two times as
requested. Of the remainder, 32 waterfalls were only visited once, five
waterfalls were visited three times, and one waterfall was visited four times.

Black Swifts were observed during the observation of 36 waterfalls (Table 1).
Of these, birds were observed at the falls at 18 waterfalls (1 CA, 1 BC, 6
OR, and 10 WA), and the remainder (18) were observations of birds in the sky
only.

Bob Altman
American Bird Conservancy
Northern Pacific Rainforest BCR Coordinator
311 NE Mistletoe
Corvallis, OR 97330
phone/fax - 541 745-5339
baltman at abcbirds.org
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