Hello again folks! It turns out that I missed a few reports in yesterday’s post.
First, an update from Simon Duval in QC:
A mixed bag of news, steady flow at one site, bander not available at another site and a lot of birds at the other one!
Mirabel
From Jan 30 to Feb 23, 132 SNBU were banded in 14 mornings. The flock remains relatively small compared to other years, some days are very good, some days are very bad. Interesting recaptures during the period included:
-1 SNBU banded in winter January 2012 as an ASY, recaptured at Mirabel also in March 2014 and again this year, he seems to like the area!
-1 SNBU (2691-45818) banded in Rivière Saint-Jean, QC in April 2015.
Mirabel Season total: 325 SNBU, 1 LALO, 1 HOLA
St-Roch
The lack of an available bander during the period made things harder. From Jan 30 to Feb 23, only two mornings of banding produced 45 SNBU.
St-Roch Season total: 323 SNBU, 5 LALO, 5 HOLA.
Coteau-du-lac
Coteau was once again the most productive site of the period. From Jan 30 to Feb 22, 329 SNBU and 19 LALO were banded in 12 mornings. Activity peaked from Feb 10 to 13 with 146 SNBU banded in 4 mornings and 1 single 100 SNBU banded day on Feb 19.
Coteau-du-lac Season total: 696 SNBU, 32 LALO, 39 HOLA.
Southern Quebec Teams’ total is 1344 SNBU banded, about 900 birds behind last year’s total to date.
Simon Duval
The Migration Research Foundation
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Next is a message from Emily McKinnon, who is a researcher involved in nanotagging SNBUs as was described in yesterday’s post. She sent a few photos of the nanotags that were deployed with David Okines, so that if anyone re-traps them they will know what the tags look like.
Here you can see the Nanotag backpack with the antenna sticking out the tail:
A little harder to see the tag on this bird, but the antenna sticking out is obvious:
David O. had a great technique for making sure we didn’t get any glue on the birds’ feathers (we tie on the harness then glue the knot so it doesn’t slip). We used a band envelope to make two small shims to stick under the tag and keep it off the bird while we tied and glued the harness. Also kept the birds’ feathers nice and smooth! We need to patent this for deployment of tags on small birds!
Bye bye, SNBUs! Watch out for that harrier! (David Okines releasing a box of buntings at the end of the day).
First detections of our birds away from the deployment site! Birds were all tagged on a very cold day on the 13th with David Okines at St. Williams, and several remained in the area for at least a week. The next weekend it warmed up and we had a hit on a radio tower about 22km in-land from our original tagging site. This bird was an SY male and he was detected as a ‘fly-by’, meaning he wasn’t staying in the area but just blipped past the tower. Hopefully we have some more hits from the other birds! Most of the towers are passively recording data and will be downloaded in April, so we will get a big chunk of data then. A few towers, like this one (called ‘Falconer’ on the map) are connected directly to the internet and upload data periodically.
