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Archived Postings

September 11, 2006 – September 17, 2006

September 11 to September 17, 2006 Activity at the banding lab this week started where last week ended; with some amazing fall weather but no birds around to enjoy it. For the first few days there were very few songbirds moving through the area and netting was very slow, catching about 3 birds a day. The only interesting capture during that time was a black bear, although it was only captured for a matter of 2.67 seconds before destroying the net. The bear was along the main path when the banders came out of one of the netlanes. The bear and banders were about 50 feet apart. Fortunately, the bear spooked first and ran off into the forest. Unfortunately, it ran straight into an area where four nets are clustered. There was the usual rustle in the trees that a charging black bear makes followed by the very distinct “ding” of a net pole. Luck was in our favour. Of the four nets in that zone, the bear chose to run through the one that a deer had damaged a few days before. The net had to be replaced, saving us a lot of quality mending time. One thing is for sure, a charging black bear does far more damage to a net then a flying squirrel would ever hope to accomplish. By mid-week, things picked up again. Yellow-rumped warblers, ruby-crowned kinglets, orange-crowned warblers, dark-eyed juncos, and white-crowned sparrows were all seen in some pretty good numbers. This rush of migrants also brought the American tree sparrows with them. These little guys are one of the last of the expected species to move through on fall migration. It is always a little disappointing when the first tree sparrow is captured; it truly means that the season is nearing an end. Regardless of the tree sparrows, there were now birds around to catch and count. Just as things were looking up, the bad weather arrived….. in style. All those wonderful warm days earlier in the month added up to a long period of wet, cold, and dreary weather. Banding was spotty for the rest of the week. If it wasn’t raining first thing in the morning, it would start mid-morning. But honestly….it was somewhat of a treat to roll out of bed, see the rain fall, think “naw”, and roll back into bed. It is something that does not happen often during the summer. It was an amazing week for saw-whet owl banding. The weather only allowed owl banding to occur on four nights, but they were some busy nights. 49 saw-whet owls were band on those four nights. Only one saw-whet owl was banded on the first night of the week, making the other three nights very busy. It takes a little longer to extract and band an owl, so banding 15, 16, or 17 owls a night keeps you moving. The majority of the saw-whet owls that are banded are immature females. The sex of a saw-whet owl is determined by a combination of wing to weight ratio. The females have longer wing cords and are heavier. There is a grey area in the ratio where the sex cannot be determined. Of the 80 saw-whets banded to date: three are male, ten are unknown, and the rest are female. The skewed distribution between males and females is because of two possible reasons. Either the females respond better to the lure call than males, or there are more females around. But if the latter of the two reasons is true, then sign me up, because those are odds a guy can definitely handle.

2010