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Room to Nest: What Limits a Swallow Population?

Grade 7 life science: analyze a museum's tree swallow nest box study to explain how nest sites and food limit individual birds and a population.

Grade 7ScienceInteractive · Printable

Aligned toMS-LS2-1

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What’s included

Single worksheet
Auto-graded online
1 NGSS standard
Printable answer key
11 questions
Classroom-ready

Details

Format: Interactive · Printable
Grade: Grade 7
Subject: Science
Question types: Fill in the blank, Multiple choice, Sorting, Short answer

About this worksheet

What students practice

Students use nest box data to identify when nest sites limit the size of a breeding population.
Students use insect and chick data to explain how a food shortage affects individual organisms.
Students argue that the resource limiting a population can change over time.

How to use

Read the passage together and have students say in their own words what each table column counts. Discuss what a limiting resource is after Section 1, before students start Section 2.

Curriculum

NGSS standard covered

MS-LS2-1

Use data to explain how the amount of resources affects individual organisms and populations in an ecosystem.

Preview

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Name Date

Room to Nest: What Limits a Swallow Population?

Use seven years of nest box and insect records to explain how resources affect birds and their population.

Nest boxes and nesting pairs

Read the passage and study Table 1. Then answer the questions.

Swallows at Bellwether Meadow

1The bird hall of the Larkspur Museum of Natural History holds thousands of bird specimens, but the museum's bird curator, Dr. Marisol Ochoa, also studies living birds. Since 2018 she has run a field study of tree swallows at Bellwether Meadow, a wet meadow beside a reservoir. She wants to know what limits the number of swallows that can raise young there. Seventh grader Keanu Kahale joined the study as a summer volunteer and helped analyze its records.

2Tree swallows are small birds that catch flying insects in the air, and parents carry insects back to their chicks many times an hour. Swallows nest in holes in dead trees or in nest boxes, but they cannot dig holes of their own. Each pair needs its own hole and chases other swallows away from it. Bellwether Meadow had only a few dead trees, so in 2018 the museum put up 12 nest boxes. Staff added 12 more boxes in 2020 and 12 more in 2022.

3Tree swallows spend the winter far to the south. Each spring, the birds that arrive at the meadow include adults that nested there before and younger birds looking for a place to nest.

4Every May, volunteers count the pairs that build nests in the boxes. They also count adult swallows that have no nest site; these birds perch near the boxes and try to take them over. Licensed bird banders weigh the chicks once, when they are 12 days old, and return them to the nest within a few minutes. Later, volunteers record how many young leave each nest. In June, a net trap at the edge of the meadow catches flying insects, and volunteers count the catch each day.

5In 2024, June was unusually cold and rainy at the meadow. Keanu put the records into the two tables on this worksheet.