The aim of the project is to observe long-term alterations in the population size and in the breeding success of the Estonian barn swallows and house martins. 

The monitoring of the swallows and martins as bird species that are closely related to agricultural landscapes is important in order to assess the impact of the grand scale changes that have been taking place in Estonian agriculture over the past few years. The project has been designed so that anyone interested could join in. The census titled “The Swallows of my native place” that has been carried out in Estonia since 1993 attempts to bring as wide a range of bird lovers to bird monitoring as possible. The format of the census is rather simple and the wide participation enables to get extensive data about swallows and martins covering all the regions of Estonia. The observers who watch birds parallel to their everyday activities mark the data about the number of birds and about the breeding results to special census information sheets.