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Archived Postings

June 5, 2008 – June 11, 2008

Spring migration monitoring has come to an end at the LSLBO, officially ending on June 10th. We typically end at this time because there are very few birds still migrating and most birds have begun their breeding activities. We spent the last week of spring migration catching and counting some of the late migrants, which included Canada warblers and mourning warblers. Cedar waxwings were the only birds observed actively migrating, small flocks were counted during the last few days of monitoring. These are very good looking birds, and we were fortunate to catch one. We also captured two yellow-bellied flycatchers, which are also late migrants. Yellow-bellied flycatchers provide a challenge to banders because they are almost identical in plumage to both the alder and least flycatchers. These three species have distinct songs, but since birds tend not to sing during banding we are forced to do morphological measurements to determine exactly what bird we are dealing with. After spending time measuring individual feathers, comparing bills lengths, and trying to determine if the legs are either dark brownish or light blackish, you begin to wish the bird would sing…just once. Now that spring migration monitoring has ended, here are a few quick statistics to see how the season went. Spring migration ran for 46 days, from April 26th to June 10th. Mistnets were set on all but three of those days; lousy weather forced us to keep the nets closed. We banded 730 birds through the spring, which is below the average spring banding total at the LSLBO. Spring banding totals in the past have ranged from a low of 446 birds to a high of 2590. We did have good representation of species diversity in the nets, with 47 different species banded. The top banded species were: white throated sparrow (99), Swainson’s thrush (82), yellow-rumped warbler (60), Tennessee warbler (53), and American redstart (42). These five species are usually within the top banded species each spring. In some cases, such as the rose-breasted grosbeak, winter wren, and swamp sparrow, only one or two individuals were captured that represented their species. Overall, it was a successful spring and we are ready to switch to the summer monitoring projects. Over the next month we will be focusing on two projects. The first is MAPS, which stands for Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship. Basically, MAPS monitors bird populations on the breeding grounds. It looks at demographics, breeding densities, and nesting success. Banding on the MAPS sites is relaxed compared to migration banding. This gives us the opportunity to work on the other project, the Canada Warbler Project. Over the next month we will be searching out breeding pairs of Canada warblers, locating their nests and monitoring the nests. The national status of Canada warblers has recently changed, which boosts the relevance and importance of this project. Details of status change and progress of the hunt for the elusive nests will be explained next week.

2010