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Archived Postings

August 1, 2005 – August 7, 2005

August 1 to August 7, 2005 It is now officially August; one more sign that the summer is whipping by far to fast. Migration seemed to have slowed down (as compared to last week) as we entered this first week of August. The first three days of the week were extremely windy which slowed overall movement right down and only 20 birds were banded each day. However, a large movement of Franklin’s gulls occurred on August 2nd where over 1700 individuals were counted in less than two hours. The weather improved on August 4th and the songbirds took advantage of it. Once again, there were birds everywhere and 115 were banded that day. Banding for the rest of the week remained steady as bird activity around the lab remained quite high. The fall banding total cracked 1000 birds (officially 1022) by the end of the week. Two new species for 2005 were banded this week; the western tanager (the LSLBO’s logo bird) and a blue-headed vireo. Both of these species breed in the area, so it is quite surprising that it took this long to catch them. A ruby-throated hummingbird was also captured in the nets. Very few are seen at the banding lab and even fewer are captured. The mesh of the nets is almost too big for them and they get stuck trying to go through the nets and end up looking like darts in the nets. The LSLBO is not permitted to band hummingbirds, and considering how delicate they are I’d prefer not to. Slave Lake is nearing the northern limit of the ruby-throated hummingbirds breeding range. A member of the LSLBO has hummingbird feeders set up in his yard and he claims he gets more and more to his feeders each year. However, he also stated that it took awhile (one or two summers) before the hummingbirds were attracted to his feeders.

2010