The above quote, attributed to Marnie Gibson, pretty well sums up the weather we’ve been having. First thing this morning I was shaking frost off the nets and by noon I was spitting midges out of my mouth. The local insectivores were happy; after all, you can’t eat snow flakes. Myrtle Warblers, Eastern Phoebes, Tree Swallows could all be seen chowing down on these little winged meatballs.
Yesterday the team banded 29 birds but handled over 40 retraps including many American Tree Sparrows and Juncos. As Nancy noted, it appeared that many birds were “on hold”, waiting for good travelling conditions. Last night there must have been a significant exodus as numbers weren’t nearly so great as the day before. We banded only 17 birds. But…..we did hit the 50 mark for the number of species encountered in a day! A sure sign that the migration is heating up.
April 19th; Banded 29:
1 Mourning Dove
1 Golden-crowned Kinglet
1 European Starling
1 American Tree Sparrow
5 Song Sparrows
6 Dark-eyed Juncos
1 Red-winged Blackbird
5 Brown-headed Cowbirds
8 American Goldfinches
ET’s: 39 spp.
April 20th; Banded 17:
1 Golden-crowned Kinglet
1 Eastern Bluebird
1 American Robin
4 American Tree Sparrows
2 Song Sparrows
2 Swamp Sparrows
4 Dark-eyed juncos
1 Brown-headed Cowbird
1 American Goldfinch
ET’s: 50 spp.
Photo Gallery:
Rick
And at Fern Hill School:
Yesterday in Oakville, despite cold winds and a few snow flurries we caught and banded a lot of birds – 42 to be exact. And I would like to tell you what they were but Katherine neglected to pass that information on to me. But I can tell you that a large proportion of them were Icterids – Red-winged Blackbirds, Common Grackles and Brown-headed Cowbirds. These birds were hitting the feeders hard and if we’d been using nets with a bigger mesh our catch would have been considerably larger (with the small mesh, used for most songbirds, the larger birds work their way out fairly easily).
Rick
And in Burlington today: Finally we had some nice weather! Today was sunny and bright and we were all happy to spend time outside monitoring bird migration. Janice and I had a relatively slow flow of birds in the nets and traps but there was always a few to show during my classes, and the slower pace allowed for some great conversation about, and in depth looks at the birds.
Today we banded a total of 7 birds including:
2 Mourning Doves
2 European Starlings
1 American Tree Sparrow
2 Song Sparrow
We had a couple nice seasonal firsts including a Peregrine Falcon, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, Eastern Phoebe, and Great Blue Heron. I was also so happy to see our population of Tree Swallows survived the wintery weekend and are swooping about showing great interest in the nest boxes.
Katherine