Yesterday, the 16th, was an…..unusual day. It was overcast with a strong S wind blowing through the night and most of the morning. The forecast rain held off for awhile but started about 3 hours after we opened the nets. We raced around and collapsed them until the rain stopped (a little more than an hour later) and then reopened them when it stopped…..but a little more than an hour later the driving rain forced us to close them again, this time for good.

But the S wind had birds on the move. Shortly after opening, I heard a Common Loon yodelling (and I was so not expecting it that I had trouble recognizing it). We saw 7 altogether and it was interesting to watch them. With this strong tailwind pushing them they blew across the sky; they must have been flying at least 60 km/hr. At that speed they could easily make Georgian Bay in 5 hours. These were the first loons of the year.

And we had two other species show up for the first time as well: a Northern Rough-winged Swallow over the river and Chipping Sparrows around the traps. We banded 8 “chippers”. These were all carrying good fat loads so I think they are still underway further north. Interestingly we didn’t encounter one Common Redpoll today – they appear to have all moved out, on their way to the far north.

But what made the day really unusual was the hustle and bustle of the (very large) film crew that was shooting some scenes for the TV series Copper, which is set in New York City in the 1860’s. It is amazing the amount of equipment and the number of people it takes to shoot just a few brief scenes! Trucks and people were everywhere. They even had a guy directing traffic.

Now this could have been a bad thing, inhibiting birds around some of the nets BUT Jeff, the owner and operator of Stargrazer, the company that provides food for the cast throughout the day, was there and we had an open invitation to chow down. Of course, this faced me with tough decisions: Carol’s freshly-made scrumptious banana bread or Anne’s wonderful raisin-bran muffins sweetened with delectable eastern Ontario maple syrup or Jeff’s homemade soup, sandwiches, fruit salad and cookies. Hmmmmm….tough to decide. So, as not to offend anyone, I changed the “or’s” above to “and’s” and pigged out. I figured I would do extra net rounds the next day to make up for my indulgence. It was certainly worth it – a good decision on my part.

Despite restricted net hours, we still managed to band 33 birds:
1 Black-capped Chickadee
4 Golden-crowned Kinglets
5 Ruby-crowned Kinglets
3 American Robins
1 American Tree Sparrow
8 Chipping Sparrows
1 Field Sparrow
5 Song Sparrows
1 White-throated Sparrow
1 Dark-eyed Junco
2 Brown-headed Cowbird
1 American Goldfinch

ET’s: 44 spp.

Today was MUCH different: light N wind/breeze and clear sunny skies. I think there was a large movement of migrants during the night as we encountered 7 “new” species for the year: Northern Pintail, Pied-billed Grebe, a big movement of Bonaparte’s Gulls, Red-breasted Nuthatch, Blue-gray Gnatcatchers, Brown Thrashers, and a Pine Warbler (found by Peter and Mary Booker of Burlington). As is usually the case in the Spring when we get great weather conditions, we didn’t catch a lot of birds – we banded 34:
1 Mourning Dove
2 Brown Creepers
4 Ruby-crowned Creepers
2 Brown Thrashers
1 American Tree Sparrow
5 Chipping Sparrows
3 Field Sparrows
4 Song Sparrows
2 Swamp Sparrows
2 White-throated Sparrows
5 Dark-eyed Juncos
3 Brown-headed Cowbirds


Interestingly we had quite a high species count for this time of year: 51 spp.




The warm sunshine brought out Garter Snakes and a good number of Mourning Cloak Butterflies.

Rick