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Archived Postings

May 21, 2009 – May 27, 2009

Migration monitoring continued through the third week of May at the LSLBO. The week showed both strong migration passage and definite signs that the breeding season was beginning for many species. Male birds sing to attract mates and define their breeding territory. Early in the week white-throated sparrows and yellow-rumped warblers songs dominated the forest. By weeks end their songs were drowned out by Tennessee warbler, ovenbird, yellow warbler, American redstart, Canada warbler, magnolia warbler, common yellowthroat, and Philadelphia vireo. But the increasing number of singing birds was not the only sign of the quickly approaching breeding season, there was a whole lot of fighting going on. Migrants travel thousands of kilometers just to breed. It is very serious business for them. One important step in for a successful breeder is to defend a territory with the best habitat. Even though they sing to claim that territory, other males may try to steal it. So fights ensue. Fights usually involve chasing each other around, but it can become physical. Usually the stronger male wins. Male birds also fight over females, but that is a topic for another day. Even with the birds fighting for territorial dominance, migration had not finished. Actually, we had one of the most spectacular songbird passages of the spring. It’s difficult to describe how 1500 chipping sparrows migrating in a span of five minutes looks like. Just imaging the entire sky filled with little chipping birds. That occurred through the course of one morning. By the end of the day over 5000 chipping sparrows had flown over our heads. Add a thousand clay-coloured sparrows, few hundred yellow-rumped warblers, and a whole pile of birds we had absolutely no chance of identifying. That equals a very busy day of migration monitoring. With that volume of birds passing overhead it was amazing that only 66 birds were banded that day. The LSLBO banding staff took part in the 2009 Baillie Bird-a-thon on May 23. The idea is to find as many species as possible in a 24 hour period. We managed 16 hours of searching and found 100 species. This is a high count considering we stayed local, searching within the Lesser Slave Lake Provincial Park and around Slave Lake. Some of the highlight species were pacific loons, semi-palmated plover, and broad-winged hawk. One of the more unusual places we ended up bird watching was from inside a fast food establishment. Nicole was in the restaurant looking through her binoculars picking up species of gulls while her cheeseburgers and fries were being prepared. Because of the winter storms we experienced earlier in the month, many species of wood-warblers we would expect to have in the area by that time had not arrived yet and were sadly missed on our species list. These missing species began to show up over the next few days at the banding station. “Where were you two days ago!” was repeated many times.

2010