Slow start to Saw-whets

Yikes! I can't believe it it already Oct 8th! It's been a while since my last post.

We are now supposedly deep in to the Northern Saw-whet Owl banding season, but our numbers do not reflect this! I started on Sept 15th this year, 5 days earlier then any other year, and yet my total number of owls so far is very low. To date I have only captured 19 owls. If you compare this to 2006 we were at 56 by this time, in 2007 we were at 84, and last year we had captured 50 owls by this time!

The weather this fall has been dismal! It seems for every night I am able to open my nets, I have two nights were I can't. This is because it is either too windy or because it is raining, or after tonight snowing!! Although it does seem like the owls are just not moving yet. A few days ago I had perfect owling weather and yet only 1 capture at a time of the season when I should have had around 10. This is the trend across the province it seems, for example Ross at Last Mountain Lake has only captured 6 owls as of two days ago!

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a surge of owls to show up with this cold snap we are seeing now. But we will have to wait and see I guess.... Here is the first owl I captured this fall.

One thing that was really exciting for me this fall was finding a roosting Northern Saw-whet Owl in our shelterbelt. In the four years of banding, I have never found a saw-whet during the day! It was not me who actually found this little guy, I have the juncos and chickadees to thank. My dog and I were out walking in the morning a few days ago when I heard these little birds going nuts!! CHICKADDEEE-DEEE-DEEE-DEEEE!!!! There must have been twenty little birds flitting around the top of a few trees. I thought to myself there must be some kind of owl or hawk up there. So we went over to investigate and sure enough five feet from the top of the 30 foot spruce tree sat a little saw-whet staring down at me, seemingly annoyed with all the attention the little birds were giving it. It was sitting on a branch about a foot from the trunk of the tree. Below is a crappy picture of the owl. My telephoto lens is on the fritz.

Wing tagged Turkey Vultures

This is Turkey Vulture tagging season! 2009 marks the 7th year of TUVU tagging in Saskatchewan by Dr. Stuart Houston, Brent Terry, Marten Stoffel, and Mike Bloom.

For those who are not aware banders are not permitted to place aluminum bands on the legs of Turkey Vultures. This is because TUVU excrete their body waste down their legs to cool themselves. If you place an aluminum band on their leg, you soon get a cement like mass on their leg that can seriously cause problems for the bird. Therefore to track TUVU's we place a patagial tag on the wing. Below is an example of one of these tags.

For the last 7 years Stuart's crew has been tagging nestling TUVU in Saskatchewan. They are trying to determine when young TUVUs begin nesting. Before this study, there was only one TUVU of known age on a nest in North America, it was 11 years old at the time. To date, I don't believe there has been any records of any of the wing tagged vultures from Saskatchewan have begun successful breeding but it is expected in the next few years some light will be shed on this question.

Last week I joined Brent Terry and Marten Stoffel at Indian Head to check on a few TUVU nests in the area. Lorne Scott also joined us. He has had TUVUs nesting on his land for over 4 years now I believe. I had a great time with all three of these guys! And we met a couple of wonderful landowners as well.

If you see a TUVU with a green wing tag please report it. You can contact me, or Dr. Stuart Houston of Saskatoon, SK. Or you can report it to http://www.reportband.gov/.

Turkey Vultures are increasing in numbers in Saskatchewan. They are using old abandoned farm houses and buildings as an artificial cave to nest in. If you are in SK and have TUVUs nesting in an old abandoned building on your land, please contact either me or Stuart. Below is an example of a Turkey Vulture house that has been active north of Regina for at least the last 4 years.

Update on Cooper's Hawks in Wascana Centre

Posts have become scarce these days from me, mostly because Kristen and I just moved out to a farm near Edenwold, SK. We've bought an old farm yard, that hasn't really been lived in for over 10 years. Therefore, we have lost internet access for the time being (we've also lost phone service for at least another 1-2 months!!). Hopefully we can get internet sometime soon!

Anyways, I have been keeping an eye out for the young Cooper's Hawks in Wascana Centre. This is 0/K's nest (the male we banded in 2006).
O/K and his unbanded mate (we were unable to catch her this year...) were successful in fledging 4 young Cooper's Hawks out of the nest. We banded the young birds (o/X, 5/P, 5/V, 5/E) on July 19th.
Unfortunately, 0/X did not make it after leaving the nest. He was found dead on the ground near the nest on Aug 4th. It is unclear why he died as we watched him flying around about a week after we banded him and cause of death was not determined by our observations.

The other three girls have been hanging around still but seem to be moving further from the nest each day. They are likely being fed infrequently by their parents (if at all still) so are having to capture their own prey now.

Randy McCulloch and his friend Boyd, came down to Wascana Centre and were able to snap some good pictures of the young females with their red leg bands flying around. Here are two of those photos. Can you read their red leg bands? These are both Randy's photos. A special thank you to him for letting me post them here.


This photo I was able to snap on July 31st. The young birds were milling about on this gloomy day waiting for a prey delivery by mom or dad. I heard the male give his single "cak" call as he approached the nest area. As soon as the young birds heard this they all flew over to the tree where the male had just landed and 5/P grabbed the meal first! She allowed me to get quite close and watch as she gobbled down this Robin.

More colour banded Cooper's Hawks

Cooper's Hawk banding season always comes fast and flies by! We have a fairly short window of opportunity to band the birds because they leave the nest in only 28-34 days! We like to have the young birds old enough that you can precisely sex them, but not too old that they leave the nest prematurely. 2009 proved to be our best year so far in terms of the number of Cooper's Hawks banded for this project. Due to the loss of our owl earlier this spring, after never fully recovering from his initial injuries that brought him into human care, we were forced to use a mounted Great Horned Owl.

Using this mounted owl I was amazed when we caught 13 adults at 9 nests. I think the trap failed only three times, when the birds were able to detect the net and refused to come in close enough to the trap. This surpasses all of our previous years of banding adults by far! I think our highest number of adults in one year was 6.

(Adult Cooper's Hawk banded near Roche Percee)

We also banded 21 young COHA this year as well. Some of them got colour bands, while others did not. I was actually running out of colour bands, which is why some did not get any.

We did not find anything unusual in terms of brood sizes or anything like that. None of the adults that we caught were banded.

We did have three re-sightings of birds we banded in previous years. As posted earlier 0/K returned to Wascana Centre again this year for his 4th year here. He and his still unbanded mate raised 4 young chicks, who I saw all yesterday all out of the nest. I will post more on their progress in the next couple of weeks. The female we banded near Craven last year returned for here second year since we banded her. Her leg was too big to put the colour band on her, but we were able to see her aluminum band on her left leg and are confident this is the same bird. Lastly, the female we banded down near Roche Percee last year returned for her second year since we banded her as well. We initially thought that she had been unable to attract a mate this year but turned out just to be a late nester. We did catch her mate this year though.

We banded Cooper's in Moose Jaw, near Mortlach, Regina, Craven, Estevan, Saskatoon and near Prince Albert. So make sure you watch for red colour banded Cooper's Hawks!!! And if you see any please contact me!

A special thanks to the folks who helped find COHA nests and helped us band, including Kathy Hedegard, Larry Preddy, Rocky Marchigiano, Martin Gerard, Marten Stoffel, and Harold Fisher!

(Kathy releasing a Cooper's Hawk)

A little bit different - Canada Geese?

Normally, I have raptor banding stories. Today is a little bit different.

Earlier this spring I took a job with Wascana Centre Authority in Regina. This is the organization that looks after one of the largest urban parks in North America, Wascana Park.
I am the new year round Park Naturalist at Wascana Centre.

I am involved with everything that is wildlife related. One the most enjoyable parts of my job is teaching people about the environment right in the middle of our city. Watch for the interpretive program at Wascana to take off in the next year!

But enough about that. Another part of my job is trying to manage the Canada Goose population in Wascana Centre. Canada Geese (CAGO) love the park. It is relatively predator free during the breeding season, except for a few ambitious mink and a couple of foxes. But also there is a lot of food (ie grass) and people love to feed them! This equates to a whole lot of geese nesting in the park, raising a whole heck of a lot more geese that tend to survive each year. In a more natural habitat, many of the young birds would not survive, whereas almost all of the young survive in the park.

To help mitigate the goose population and reduce the number of human/goose conflicts we move a large majority of the birds up north. This year we moved ~908 CAGO up to Cumberland House Lake, roughly 7 hours north of Regina. Because the birds are flightless at this time of year we can gather up large groups of the birds and transport them to a different location.

To learn more about how many geese return to Wascana from Cumberland House next spring we banded all 900 geese! What a job! It turned out to be a lot more work then I expected. Each goose must be age, sexed and banded. Geese, like all other waterfowl, are unlike all other birds, in terms of their sex organs. All birds have a cloaca, a hole at the end of their digestive tract that serves as an excretion point for feces and urine, but also an exit or entry point for sperm. In most birds the males cloaca simply swells to aid in depositing his sperm. In waterfowl, however, males actually have a penis, that can be popped out of the cloaca and used to pass sperm to the female.
To end this story, each goose must be turned up-side down and examined to see if it has a penis or not.... Now I will reiterate, we sexed, aged and banded over 900 geese for the round up!!!

We also have been catching and banding some of the ~200 birds that were left in Wascana after the round-up. We hope to get a better idea as to which birds have a great return rate, birds we took to Cumberland House or those left in Wascana. So far we have banded 1069 Canada Geese from Wascana Centre! But just today I still saw some birds without bands!

We use a size 8 band on the Canada Geese we have here. This is the same size as a Great Horned Owl or Great Gray Owl. The difference is though that we do not use a lock-on band like we do with raptors. This is because CAGO do not have a bill capable of removing the band, so we don't have to worry about the lock-on part. Geese legs are more narrow and long and we actually mis-shape the bands slightly to allow for a more comfortable fit.


The geese used to be banded years ago as part of the round-up, but banding ceased in 1993. Ironically, earlier this year I noticed a banded goose inside the Display Ponds (the fenced area just east of the Conexus Art Centre). I convinced a few kids who were feeding the birds to feed this particular bird and I was able to read the band number off its leg. It turns out it was banded in 1993 as a young bird, incapable of flight. That makes that bird 16 years old! Interestingly, we have not encountered that individual while banding the 1069 geese this year! Where did she go? Does she know to get out of the area for round up? Interesting stuff.

So the next time you are walking around the park and see a Canada Goose, think about the fact that that bird might just over 20 years old! Lorne Scott's oldest recovered goose he banded was 28 years old when it was found!!!

All for one, and one for FEHA (pronounced 'FEE-HAW')

This goofy little line is something my Herbert/Morse crew came up with... well truth be told it was Randy alone who came up with it. As corny as it sounds it has stayed with us over the last year as we work toward a better understanding of Ferruginous Hawk population trends in Saskatchewan.

Whenever we need a little boost, for example finding a hawk nest blown out of a tree with dead chicks on the ground, or climbing a tree that is kind of dangerous, or drilling a hole in rock hard clay to install a FEHA nesting platform, one of us calls out "All for one, and one for FEHA!".

As we travel around Saskatchewan and meet landowners and teach them about the ecological and economic value of having these hawks around, I hope that we are slowly but surely increasing the number of folks who are 'for FEHA'.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the landowners who allow us to access their land and study these beautiful hawks. Without you this project would not be possible! Whether its simply allowing us on your land, or you showing us where the hawks are, or just coming out to see the hawks with us, we appreciate your kindness every step of the way.

I am always amazed at the generosity and warmth that comes from every person we meet from across our province. There seems to be a genuine interest and desire to look after these hawks and make sure they are here in the future. I think conserving these hawks is important not only because of the benefits they bring to landowners through their proficient gopher consumption, but also just because they are such a brilliant part of the prairie ecosystem. There is not a more breath-taking sight then an adult Ferruginous Hawk flying over at sunset, calling to the vast expanse of native prairie below. Unfortunately this is a decreasingly common sight in Saskatchewan as more native prairie is lost under the cultivator. We have to travel to the small pockets of native prairie pastures in Saskatchewan to experience this now.

Once again, I'd just like to say thanks to all the landowners and friends who aided us this summer!! We couldn't have done it without you! Thanks for taking care of these hawks!