Beau with his geolocator nicely in place.
Another foray with the trap shortly after I got up resulted in the capture of Coquette’s mate, Beau. Beau is a handsome “older” bird or After Second Year (ASY) – as was Coquette. Although he had a longer wing (108 mm vs 100 mm) he weighed 2 grams less. He wasn’t carrying any fat. Most of this has likely been due to the enormous amount of energy he has had to put out defining and maintaining his territory, “guarding” his mate, and keeping Hopeful Interlopers at bay.
Swollen right eye: illness or injury?
A male Snow Bunting is judged to be ASY by the amount of white in the secondary and, especially, primary coverts and by the blackness of the alula:
ASY Male: alula black.
ASY Male: greater secondary coverts all white.
ASY Male: primary coverts all white (or mostly all white).
For the past several days I have been spending much of my time outside looking for pairs of birds and, once I’ve found them, waiting to see if they are building nests (or the female is building a nest). It is slow going as the birds are widely spread out. Also, the females are spending a lot of their just time feeding; rarely have I seen any carrying nesting material. I’m trying to sort this out. Have they not started nest buidling? Are the nests built but they haven’t laid their 3rd egg yet (at which time they start incubating)? If it’s the second option it would make a lot of sense that they would spend a good deal of time feeding – both to provide the raw materials to make eggs with and to fatten up so they can spend long periods sitting on the nest. The bottom line though is that finding nests right now is difficult.
Scrap metal heap at the north end of town. They seem to be able to ship it in….but not out.
We hiked from my lodging all the way up to the old Norad station on the very outskirts of town. I found several pairs and one nest – which I will come back to in several days. On the way back we dropped down into the industrial part of town – there’s a large quarry for sand and gravel, a number of construction businesses, and a huge heap of scrap metal. It seems that vehicles and applicances can find their way up to Iqaluit but never their way back.
Crowberries that have survived the Winter may be a good source of food for a variety of birds and animals.
Rick
Hey Hon—-would it not make sense that these older birds at least, are re-using the same nests? Since they are in rocky crevaces and not really open to the elements, wouldn’t they be somewhat preserved and quite useable the following year (or years)? This would explain why you’re not seeing nesting material being carried around.
-Marg
Hi:
I don’t think that’s the case. On East Bay Island where we had a lot of breeding pairs year after year, they used different nesting sites each year. The problem with old nests is that they tend to contain a lot of parasites. These can obviously be avoided by changing nest sites.