At Ruthven:
Mike and the crew banded 29 birds including the first Brown Thrasher of the year..
ET’s: 43 spp.
At Fern Hill Oakville:
I got there early – in time to see a beautiful sunrise. We were kept busy for the first 3 hours but then it tapered off….slowly. The highlight for me: I was approaching a new net that we had put in the edge of a small woodlot adjacent to the school when I saw 2 Cooper’s Hawks chasing each other and coming right at me! The net was less than 10 meters away when the first bird ploughed into it. The second hawk veered up and over the net but then turned (right over my head) and attacked the 1st hawk. The attack lasted only a few seconds as the attacker extricated itself from the net and flew off when I approached. One of the neat things about the school is the support it lends to the field studies program. The admin paged the “Young Ornithologists” over the PA so they could all come outside and see the bird up close.
Banded 31:
2 Mourning Doves
1 Downy Woodpecker
5 Black-capped Chickadees (all with good fat loads = migrants)
1 American Tree Sparrow
4 Song Sparrows
1 Dark-eyed Junco
6 Red-winged Blackbirds
2 Common Grackles
7 Brown-headed Cowbirds
2 American Goldfinches
ET’s: 26 spp.
Rick
Fern Hill Burlington:
It was another great day at the school, not incredibly busy banding-wise but there were eager birders checking out the action by the Field Station all day long. The female and male Canada Goose came by for breakfast, the male chose to perch atop of the Field Station keeping his eye on his territory for quite some time to the delight of my students. I also spotted two cottontail rabbits by the Field Station, and a white tailed deer near the net lanes.
A group of the grade six boys had a special treat this morning-they were let out of class for a bonus Field Studies class first thing in the morning for some banding. They were able to really take the time to go through the process of handling and assessing a slate coloured junco together. They handled the aging and sexing process with only the utmost maturity, of course.
We had a really nice mixture of students out today, the regulars and a lot of new faces from kindergarten to grade six. After the nets closed a large group of us hung out in the Field Station looking through the field guides and learning about Golden Winged Warblers. Janice was able to tell them about her experiences studying the birds and their hybridization with Blue Winged Warblers. I shared my experience last week up in Orillia attending a presentation by Emily Rondel for the Orillia Naturalist Club.
Today we had a special retrap: a male White-Breasted Nuthatch originally banded at the school as a second year back on June 4th 2013 by the one and only Joanne Fleet! The students thought that was pretty special, and we imagined all the places that bird has been and the challenges (both natural and man made) that it has faced.
Today we banded 8:
1 BCCH
1 AMRO
1 SOSP
1 SCJU
3 RWBL
1 AMGO
Katherine