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Archived Postings

June 11, 2009 – June 17, 2009

A full month separates spring and fall migration at the LSLBO. During that month the banding staff works on two projects which focuses on breeding birds. The first project is MAPS. Banding at MAPS stations is fairly quiet for the first couple of weeks before the young fledge from their nests. After the first visit to the four stations, only 38 birds were banded. Although this seems like a small number of birds for the amount of effort it takes to run the stations, we are gathering important information about survivorship, return rates, and productivity of our breeding birds. MAPS is where we collect our most interesting recapture records. We recaptured a male American redstart that was originally banded at the LSLBO in 2004. That makes this bird six years old. That may not seem that old, but consider that this bird only weighs 9 grams and has flown well over 50,000 km in its lifetime. To make it a little more amazing, this bird has likely returned to the same patch of forest every summer to breed. The second project is the Canada Warbler Project. This project started up in 2004 and is an intensive study on the breeding ecology of Canada warblers. Canada warblers are a poorly studied species. The high densities that breed around the LSLBO banding station makes it a great spot to study these birds to fill in some of the information gaps. Our goal is to mark individuals with colour coded legs bands to identify their breeding territories, locate nest sites, and monitor the nests. The downside to this project is that it is labour intensive and finding time between our other projects is tough. But considering that we have located 12 breeding pairs and three nests, we are doing very well. The key to Canada warbler nest searching is finding a female. The males are of no real help, they are more interested in singing on the far side of their territory and fighting off intruders. The nests we have located so far were easy because the females were busy constructing their nests. This means frequent visits with nesting material. But once the nests are build, which takes about three days, the search becomes absurdly difficult. We have to sit and wait for the female to leave the nest to feed. Once incubation begins, the females will leave the nest about once an hour. She will give a few soft chips to advertise she is off the nest and will return a few minutes later. Canada warblers nest on the ground in areas with thick vegetation. This makes it particularly difficult to spot where she lands after she is done feeding. It takes a few feedings before we can pinpoint the nest site. We have tried the “get down on hands and knees and search” approach, but nests can be in any hollow on the forest floor. Its mind-boggling how many hollows exist on the forest floor.

2010