A beautiful early morning filled with great expectations.

Traps set, snow on the ground.....where are the birds?

The beginning of the day.

The Mirabel site. From left to right: Simon Duval, Gay Gruner (both banders) and 2 volunteers.

Buntings at the traps. - R. Beauchamp

SY-M (above) and ASY-M (below)

Tail of a SY bird (top) and ASY (bottom)

Bonjour de Barnston-Ouest,

Same story in southern Quebec, where winter is a sad, wet shadow of its usual self. As soon as we have more than 5 cm of snow the bunting show up in force…had 175 a couple of weekends ago. Subsequently, we lost most of the little snow we had and numbers dropped off dramatically, increasing again yesterday with a few more centimetres of snow. This morning it was pouring rain…time will tell if it will be worthwhile for the banders to show up this weekend. For those interested in the site, I include a web-cam address. On good days the driveway and the barn roof are covered with snow buntings.
http://www.wunderground.com/webcams/siutimmiutaliq/1/show.html

Cheers and happy bunting hunting.

Carl Bromwich

The season started very slow in our back field, in Lanark, Ontario, with 4 or 5 Snow Buntings coming to feed. The numbers increased gradually and we’re up to about 60-70 birds now. Nowhere close to the numbers we had in the last couple of years, which was around 150.

Lise Balthazar

Lanark, Ontario

Male Snow Bunting captured by Fergus Nicoll who bands west of Ottawa.

Sage Advice from David Lamble, the pre-eminent bunting bander in the country, for those starting out and getting “antsy” because those d&$#%d birds just won’t go in the traps:

Hello All:

My ground traps are still effective — but there are some conditions.

First: I am off any major roadway — so the traffic is minimal.

Second: We have cloudy days, which are quite necessary for trapping the birds — the bright sunny days give me about 10% of the trapping of cloudy days.

Third: My area is very open with a fair bit of wind ( we are supposedly the windiest place in Ontario) — so the windy conditions seem to make the birds hungrier.

Fourth: I make a strong effort to capture the Shrikes and Hawks that follow the birds and move them several miles away (after banding, of course). So far I have captured 3 Shrikes and no hawks in January and not had any repeats — the more heavily hunted the Snow Buntings, the more nervous they are — just as the increased traffic at other sites seems to make them less likely to come to the bait.

So even on poor days, I will get 10 to 15 birds in my 3 traps every 30 to 40 minutes. Good days give me 25 to 50 birds every hour. When the weather was terrible, last winter, I might get 100 birds per hour.

Potter traps were used exclusively in Greenland, when the government was making an attempt to band as many Snow Buntings as possible. The array of Potter traps consisted of 20 or so on a long table. I had the impression that the trappers/banders had several tables, but I am not certain. Even so, the number of Snow Buntings trapped was quite small compared to the numbers our group captures each winter.

I have tried several Potter traps with limited success. I have never tried mist nets (beacuse it is too windy here, most days), but have heard of others using mist nets and a lure tape with some success.

Take care……………. David

Thanks to all that have sent in information and pictures.

Rick