1st Wascana MAPS session of the season!

So here we are already half way through June!  Amazing how time seems to fly.
As an update to the Snow Bunting post made months ago, the snow never really materialized here in Saskatchewan in certain spots and we therefore did not have the opportunities to catch Snow Buntings!  Zero SNBU captured... Alas we await the snow... but hopefully not that soon.

However, on June 12th, 2012, myself along with a dedicated crew of volunteers got the mist nets open for the first session of the Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship station in Wascana Centre.  This is the third season that we have been running this program in the Habitat Conservation Area within the Centre.

(Bob fixing up one of the mist nets)

It was a fun morning with 51 new birds captured and banded, as well as 5 recaps (birds that already had bands on their legs, from previous years).  Here is the list of species and totals from Tuesdays banding.  To see the banding results from 2010 & 2011 check out Wascana Centre's website.

Species	Banded	Recap
Red-winged Blackbird	12
Yellow Warbler	9
American Robin	5	1
American Goldfinch	5	1
Gray Catbird	4	2
Common Yellowthroat	3
Cedar Waxwing	2	1
Clay-colored Sparrow	2
Song Sparrow	2
Brown-headed Cowbird	2
Warbling Vireo	1
Brown Thrasher	1
Common Grackle	1
Savannah Sparrow	1
Marsh Wren	1

Pictured above is the male After Second Year American Goldfinch that was already sporting a band when it was captured in the net.  This bird was originally captured on June 14, 2010 in the Habitat Conservation Area on our very first session of MAPS in our first year.  It was captured in net 8 in 2010, and captured in net 9 in 2012.  This bird was aged as an ASY in 2010, making it atleast 5 years old! 

Another one of our recaptures was a Gray Catbird, that was banded on August 3rd, 2011 as a recent fledgling.  When we captured it on Tuesday last week, it was sporting a rather large cloacal protuberance - suggesting that it is an actively breeding male this summer! 

Here's Duncan with a Cedar Waxwing.

  An adult male Savannah Sparrow.  Only the second SAVS captured during MAPS (2010-2012).

Our next banding session is scheduled for later this week. 

Snow Bunting Banding

This summer Oliver Love sent out a request for volunteer bird bandings to help study Snow Buntings across Canada this winter. Of course, without many birds to band around here during the winter, I have jumped at the opportunity. We are still waiting for a bit of snow around here before we start heading out, but I thought I would just post a bit information on the Snow Bunting.

The Snow Bunting is a small passerine that nests in Canada's Arctic. It comes down to Saskatchewan during the winter in small to very large flocks. The bird is easily identifiable with its white body and black back, wings and tail. While in flight the bird is easily to ID with its long black and white wings.

Oliver and his team of student researchers have been working on Snow Buntings on Canada's East Bay Island. Since 2007 his team have banded an amazing 1000 Snow Buntings on this tiny little island in the Arctic. They have also been doing some really amazing research using geolocators, colour banding and sound recording devices. They are studying signals of male quality, mating strategies, reproductive physiology and the migratory connectivity of the Snow Bunting population on East Bay Island. For more information on all of this research, check out the first "Snow Bunting Report" published by Oliver and his crew earlier this week. Some fascinating information in here.

You can also check out the Canadian Snow Bunting Network website.

We'd also like to thank Sun Country Farms in Langham, SK for their help in acquiring the feed we need to catch the birds. Thanks Sun Country Farms! :)

I look forward to posting once we start catching some birds!!

A little bird feeder banding

This weekend we got out and set up a net to try to trap and band some of the birds frequenting our bird feeders. We have been trapping Black-capped Chickadees here at our farm since February 12, 2010. On November 11, we captured 11 unbanded Black-capped Chickadees and 2 chickadees that already wore bands. The two recaptured chickadees were banded at our feeders on Feb 13, 2010, and on Feb 21, 2010. That was approximately 21 months ago!

Band #2031-73210 was originally aged as a Second Year bird, meaning it was hatched in 2009, so it is now ~2.5 years old, while #2031-73202 was originally aged as a After Second Year bird, which means it hatched in 2008 or earlier, so it is atleast 3.5 years old and may be older. These birds weighed 12.6g and 12.2g on Nov 11, 2011, and 13.6g and 12.4g on their initial capture dates. This photo shows the wing of Chickadees #202. You can see the greater coverts have nice bold white edges. The primary coverts are nice and broad with some white peppering the middle of the feathers. These two characteristics suggest this is an older bird, which is confirmed by the band it was wearing.

We had been seeing this bird at the feeder for a couple of days and were excited to capture it. It is a White-throated Sparrow. This is a tan-striped bird, as you will notice the white and black crown, and white throat are not very colourful. We hope it survives the winter! Normally these birds will winter in the southeastern United States.

To learn more about White-throated Sparrows check out this website (The Cornell Lab of Ornithology).

A big surprise in Wascana Centre!

Well the snow fell on Sunday this week and already a Northern Hawk Owl shows up in the Centre just yesterday (Nov 7, 2011)!!

This is the second NHOW that has been in Regina in the last three years. This is a very unique find as the Northern Hawk Owl spends almost all of its time in the forests of northern Saskatchewan. It is quite unusual to find it south on the prairies. Margaret Belcher's "Birds of Regina" (1980) makes no mention of Hawk Owls in Regina.

We were able to capture this bird this morning and band it.
The bird weighed 330 gram, with a wing chord of 227mm. I aged it as an AHY as it had retained primaries, secondaries, primary coverts, alula, and median and lesser coverts. However, the greater coverts were all replace. You can see this in the photo below.


The bird was originally spotted by Dan Sawatsky on his street in southern Regina. I later saw it in the Habitat Conservation Area in Wascana Centre. This morning it was in the Display Ponds.


Kim Mann snapped this photo and allowed me to post it here. Thanks Kim!

56 NSWO to date

So things never really picked up for saw-whets this year. Our highest capture rate in one night was 9 birds. With this snow maybe a few might still be moving through....

The owls still haven't arrived....

Last night I closed the nets at 22:15 (a little bit early...), after having them open for over three hours. No wind, the nets hung beautifully still. The full moon was out last night, but there was significant cloud cover, and there are still many leaves on the trees so shadows were cast on the nets. In the last 5 previous years, this is our peak weekend.

A seemingly ideal night for owls...

And yet no one hit the net. We didn't even hear any owls around.

Since my last post on October 2nd we have added 4 more owls, to a lackluster showing of 7 owls in total. A boring season so far.

We had friends Theo and Karen Kolkman out to check out the banding on Saturday and managed to atleast catch a single owl for them at 23:10. Here's Theo examining the owl.

The forecast has a few NW wind evenings coming up here and the temperature is dropping, so maybe, just maybe the owls will begin to move through our area. If not, I've got no idea as to what has happened to them this year.

Stay tuned...