Putting a "backpack" on an unwilling purple martin is just about as tricky as it sounds. Yet Nature Canada hopes doing so might shed light on the calamitous decline in the birds' numbers in Ontario in recent years.
"The population is just plummeting," Nature Canada spokesman Paul Jorgenson said Tuesday at the Nepean Sailing Club, where one of the largest colonies of purple martins in the region nests in two highrise "bird condos."
Since 2005, the number of purple martins in Ontario has dropped from about 25,000 to an estimated 15,000 today. Similar declines have been recorded across Eastern Canada and the U.S. northeast.
Purple martins - which nest only in man-made houses throughout much of North America - are the largest of nine swallow species that breed in Canada and the United States.
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