The Cornell Tree Swallow Project

The Experimental Ponds is home to one of the longest-running large-scale studies of individually marked free-living birds.
Since 1985 the Ponds has hosted a study of nest-box breeding tree swallows (Tachycineta bicolor). This project, which was initially established by Dr. David Winkler and is now co-run by Dr. Maren Vitousek and Dr. Conor Taff, uses tree swallows as windows into the natural world to test basic questions about how organisms function in natural environments. The project has generated over 120 publications since its inception. Major themes include life history evolution, stress physiology, sociality, reproductive behavior, nutrition and energetics, dispersal, ecological immunology, climate change, and thermal biology. Find out more about current work at the Vitousek Lab website.