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Archived Postings

July 16, 2007 – July 22, 2007

Banding at the LSLBO throughout the second week of fall migration was a little slower than anticipated. A total of 172 birds were banded during the week. Daily banding totals averaged about 25 birds a day, ranging from a high of 53 birds to a low of 13 birds. Yellow-rumped warblers, black-and-white warblers, yellow warblers, Tennessee warblers and American redstarts remained the top banded species. These species were also the most frequently encountered birds during observations and migration counts. Although some birds were moving about, overall migration was slow, even for those abundant species. A few flocks have been recorded on visual migration counts, but the sky has been generally empty of migrating songbirds. Things are definitely not busy. Part of the reason could be that daytime temperatures have been consistently reaching over 30 degrees. Birds are most active during the early morning hours when things are cooler. The energy it takes to fly around is high and increases in the warm weather. So only after a few hours the sun peaks over the trees and it becomes instantly hot and overall bird activity drops for the rest of our banding day. One of the highlights of monitoring migration is that every day is different. You never know when the sky will be filled with migrating Myrtle warblers or if the nets will be dripping with Tennessee warblers on the next check. Neither of these has occurred yet this fall and it makes you wonder how this 30 degree weather is affecting the bird’s migration. Birds do the majority of their migrating at night, partly because conditions are cooler and they expend less energy flying. The thermals rising from the warm ground provides excellent loft for the birds to reach their migration heights. Nighttime conditions have also been clear, which helps in navigation, and calm, so they are not battling a headwind. It seems like very ideal migrating conditions. So comes the question, have the birds been bypassing the LSLBO because of good weather conditions? I really hope not. It is only the second week of fall migration so it is still very early to tell if the birds have been zipping past us or if the full migratory passage is still to come. On the positive note, we have not witnessed much evidence of mixed flocking (that’s commonly seen during heavy migration) and there are still birds on the breeding grounds. Breeding activity is still occurring and we have proof that some locally hatched birds are still in the area. It is impossible to know where all these young birds we are banding are coming from. The only way to know for sure is to band the bird while they are still in the nest. This past week we recaptured two juvenile Canada warblers in the migration nets that were originally banded as nestlings earlier this summer. These two birds are about one month old and it is neat to see that they are still in the area. More importantly, we know these two birds have survived the post-fledgling stage of their lives and are preparing for the long migration ahead of them. We worked very hard to find these nests and monitor the young. To see a couple of them successfully make it though their time as fledglings makes the effort worth while. It almost makes us feel like proud parents.

2010