Summer is here! And now the days get slowly shorter. By the time the Fall banding season rolls around I will be able to sleep into 5:30 rather than get up at 4:00 as I was doing just a couple of weeks ago. The birds have not been idle: arrive, breed, nest, raise and fledge young; outta here, back down South. Many birds are well along in this timetable – most at least have eggs although many are raising (or have raised) young.
At Ruthven, robins, bluebirds, grackles and phoebes, which arrive early, are into their second broods. Nestlings of long-distance migrants are hatching all over the place and parents are busy carrying food to try and quench voracious appetites. You just have to spend a few minutes sitting and watching and you will see the parent birds hard at work. Give it a try.
And it’s the same all over. I was at Fern Hill School in Burlington yesterday to help take down nets and we caught a young Chipping Sparrow and a “family” of Yellow Warblers: male, female, and (very young) juvenile. In another month, when the young have completely fledged and the adults have gone through a complete moult, Yellow Warblers will be on their way South to be quickly followed by an outpouring of species from the boreal forest further north.
At this time, in the Arctic, Snow Buntings should be well into their breeding/nesting cycle but for some strange reason an adult male in Nova Scotia is still hanging around……
[Note: the SNBU pics were sent to me by collaborator Jeff MacLeod; I don’t know the actual photographer.]
Rick