FREDERICTON — The spring migratory season got off to an encouraging start for one threatened bird species, a national conservation group says, noting it recently logged thousands of chimney swifts at a single address in Fredricton.

Allison Manthorne, associate director of Atlantic programs with Birds Canada, said chimney swift numbers have dropped by about 90 per cent since the 1970s. So when Birds Canada counted more than 2,400 chimney swifts pouring into a city flue on the evening of May 25, she said the group was pleasantly surprised.

"It's the only large roost that we know of in Fredericton at the moment ... typically, we'll see this kind of pulse in late May of a few hundred birds," she said.

"Sometimes there's a bit of a traffic jam, and maybe it's weather, maybe it's a predator,

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