One of the most interesting things about Fern Hill School’s Oakville campus is that it is “on the edge”. To the east you look across a vacant (soybean?) field 400 meters to the 403 and, just past that to the skyline of Mississauga. Less than a kilometer to the south is Dundas Street (Highway 5) – I can’t get over all the development that is taking place now north of Dundas! [Forty years ago I used to take groups of kids to Rattlesnake Point for hiking. Looking out from the escarpment toward Toronto all you saw were farmers’ fields…..not now. The “Green Belt” is getting progressively narrower.] To the north of the school there are scrubby fields and a small woodlot until you reach Britannia. And east of us is a cemetery backing onto a wooded ravine – the edge of the woods comes within 100 meters of the campus. Somewhat like Ruthven, the school (and cemetery) form a green island in am encroaching stream of development. So when we provided a food source – bird feeders – we began to get a lot of local and wintering birds: chickadees, juncos and tree sparrows.

And now, with the migration starting early, you just never know what you might find. We banded 16 birds today and handled 16 retraps. Those are nice numbers for this time of year (and the fact that we run only 3.5 nets) but the most interesting thing was the visible migration going on all around us. We had four flocks totalling 142 Tundra Swans go right overhead. I’d love to know where they had come from! Did they follow the north shore of Lake Ontario before cutting inland somewhere over Toronto? They were heading just slightly north of west which would put them on a course for the St. Claire Marshes. We saw at least 68 American Robins. There’s a sumac thicket around which they feed as well as on the cemetery lawns close to that thicket, but every now and again a group would rise up and head off to the northeast. Their place would eventually be taken by other robins flying in from the south or southwest. There was also a small “flow” of Red-winged Blackbirds through the site. While some stayed in particular areas, calling and acting territorial, others flew through heading, usually, due north. We even had our first Killdeer sighting of the year. Once this migration thing starts rolling it’s very hard to stop; conditions can slow it down but as soon as there’s a reprieve the birds are on the move again. This year it has started VERY early.

Banded 16:
4 Mourning Doves
1 Red-bellied Woodpecker (1st for the site)
1 Downy Woodpecker
1 Northern Cardinal
3 American Tree Sparrows
3 Red-winged Blackbirds
1 Brown-headed Cowbird
1 House Sparrow

ET’s: 25 spp.
Photo Gallery:

Rick