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Archived Postings

April 26, 2008 – April 30, 2008

After another long winter away from the bird world, the anticipation of returning to the LSLBO for another season working at the migration monitoring banding station was fairly high. I was aiming to open the station by the third week in April and getting very antsy. It didn’t help that fellow birders reported encountering really cool species, such as varied thrush and Townsend’s solitaire, in Slave Lake. Others birders reported piles of dark-eyed juncos in their back yards clearing out bird feeders. Tundra swans, Canada geese, mallards, common goldeneye, bufflehead, American wigeon, and northern pintail were all observed in the open water at the mouth of the Lesser Slave River. The breaking point came one morning after several flocks of American robins passed overhead. Almost mystically I found myself at the banding station later that afternoon preparing to set up for spring migration monitoring. Unfortunately, Mother Nature had other things in mind and decided it would be fun to dump three days worth of snow on most of the province. Priorities shifted from bird watching to developing snow shoveling muscles. The banding station opened on April 26th. Only ten species were observed on the opening day. Most of those encounters were winter residents with a small number of dark-eyed juncos and a lone ruby-crowned kinglet. It amazed me how fast migration picked up this year. By April 30th hundreds of birds were migrating past the banding station, and diversity was high with over 35 different species recorded. Songs of winter wrens, hermit thrush, ruby-crowned kinglets, and song sparrows filled the forest. The species migrating in the largest numbers were American robins, blackbirds, American tree sparrows, dark-eyed juncos, northern flickers, northern harriers, and yellow-rumped warblers. Smaller numbers of Franklin’s gulls, greater white-fronted geese, Sandhill cranes, yellow-bellied sapsuckers, Say’s phoebes, sharp-shinned hawks, and orange-crowned warblers were also seen. I was excited to see a flock of snow geese and a handful of fox sparrows and was quite surprised to hear a white-throated sparrow singing this early in the season. The forest is now bristling with activity. According to the birds it is officially springtime. After a good morning of counting seemingly endless flocks of migrants, I returned to the Boreal Centre to reflect on my day, which consisted mostly of paper work and emails. I was stopped by a sound I had not heard for over eight months. It was the song of a yellow-rumped warbler. This bird was flying back and forth between two trees, occasionally singing. Suddenly, a second yellow-rumped warbler showed up and the first one promptly chased it away. That’s when I realized that this bird is establishing and defending his breeding territory. It astounded me because I had seen my first yellow-rumped warbler of the year only two days before this event. But it makes sense; he has a lot of work ahead of him to successfully nest and raise a brood, so he can’t afford to waste time. According to this particular yellow-rumped warbler, spring is definitely in the air. He just needs to find a mate to prove it.

2010