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Archived Postings

April 24, 2007 – April 30, 2007

The morning of April 24th had finally arrived and I moved with a purpose. It was going to be the first day of spring migration monitoring at the Lesser Slave Lake Bird Observatory. There was a banding station to set up, I was excited. I was forced to move a little more purposefully because, despite my excitement, I still managed to sleep in. Eventually I made it to the station to begin set-up. A song sparrow, singing from his perch near the shore, greeted me as I arrived at the banding lab. While listening to the bird sing and looking upon the lake, it hit me. It was the beginning of another summer working with amazing animals in a beautiful and peaceful location. I like my job. I did not have the opportunity to do much bird-watching over the winter. There are birds that spend the winter here, but it seemed impossible to find the time to go out and search for them. Instead, I kept myself busy developing new skills and gaining new experiences in a different work environment. My winter employment can be summarized on one occasion when the foreman shouted from across the shop, “alright, who’s letting the biologist use the torch?” A number of species had already begun their migration through the area when the banding lab opened. Slave Lake witnessed a dark-eyed junco invasion that lasted several days, they were everywhere. Most of the juncos had passed through when banding station opened, only a few stragglers remained. Song sparrows were singing along the shoreline and an eastern phoebe was investigating a possible a nesting location on the banding lab. Northern flickers, American robins, yellow-rumped warblers, blackbirds, ruby-crowned kinglets, northern harriers, sharp-shinned hawks, tree swallows, purple finches, and pine siskins were observed actively migrating. The ice had retreated from the shoreline of the lake and provided a narrow strip of open water which common goldeneyes, mallards, common mergansers, American wigeon, and a few Canada geese took advantage of. Flocks of tundra swans, greater-white fronted geese, and sandhill cranes were also seen flying by. An unusual sighting occurred on the second day of monitoring as a Townsend’s solitaire, which are uncommon in this area, made its way to the banding lab. It wasn’t captured, but it did stop in a tree to pose nicely for a couple of minutes. Only a few species were banded during the opening few days of the migration station: a few dark-eyed juncos and American tree sparrows, a sharp-shinned hawk, an American robin, and a surprisingly large number of black-capped chickadees – 42 were banded in four days. Visitors who have spent time at the banding lab would have heard the now clichéd expression that black-capped chickadees are, pound-for-pound, one of the meanest birds around. It is true. Some species are quite docile in the nets, while others try escape by just flapping their wings. Chickadees are different because they relentlessly fight back. They can become terribly tangled in the nets because they are fighting the net. During extraction they attack fingers with their arsenal of pecking motion, biting action, a special move that resembles a woodpecker hammering away on a tree, the occasional scissor-kick, and harsh language (I am assuming that is the meaning behind that noise they make). A chickadee extraction looks more like professional wrestling than removing a bird from a net. Fingers get a second pummeling during the banding process. Walking up to a net with eight chickadees in it simply means that you’re going to be awhile. Chickadees never give up; I have great respect for any species that just never gives up.

2010