Site Map Coming Soon

Site Map Coming Soon.

Dan (far left) and Ethan (third from left) with two of their field assistants, Jessamyn Conell-Price and Jonathan Perez.

Amherst, Massachusetts USA
42.23o N, 72.31o W

Coordinators:
Ethan Clotfelter and
Dan Ardia

The western Massachusetts Golondrinas Site is located on the property of Amherst College in Amherst, MA. Approximately 100 boxes were erected in 2004 and an additional 110 were put up in 2005. Currently, Tree Swallows (Tachycineta bicolor) occupy approximately one-third of the boxes, with other species (House Wrens, Troglodytes aedon; Eastern Bluebirds, Sialia sialis; Black-capped Chickadees, Poecile atricapillus) occupying another third of the boxes. Boxes are approximately 25-30 m apart in the main grid, and 30-50 m apart along the periphery. Beginning in 2005 we have sampled insects using a 2-m Rothamsted-style fan sampler.
Ethan is an assistant professor of biology at Amherst College, where he studies the behavior and physiology of both birds and fish. He began working with Tree Swallows with Linda Whittingham and Peter Dunn at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee (see Saukville, WI Golondrinas Site) in 1998. After that, he worked on Dark-eyed Juncos with Ellen Ketterson and Val Nolan for a number of years, before returning to swallows in 2004 in collaboration with Dan. 

Dan has been a tree swallow farmer for many years. In addition to working with Ethan to set up this site, he was involved in setting up the research sites in Fairbanks, AK and Loudon County, TN. He is interested in many aspects of the reproduction of tree swallows, including egg quality, incubation behavior, parental care and offspring quality. He is currently a Darwin Fellow in the Program in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Massachusetts and a Visiting Scholar at Amherst College.