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Archived Postings

August 28, 2008 – September 3, 2008

September is my favorite time of year to be working at the LSLBO. It sounds funny because the weather is starting to become cooler and there are generally fewer birds around. Migration is nearing its end for many of the brightly coloured warblers. Only a few Canada warblers, American redstarts, ovenbirds, black-and-white warblers, and Tennessee warblers have been seen over the past week. Still, there are stragglers and a bird you thought long gone can show up in a net at anytime. Even though the season is ending for some species, other species that breed further north are still expected to begin their migration through the area. American pipits, Lapland longspurs, orange-crowned warblers, white-crowned sparrows, fox sparrows, and dark-eyed juncos are expected to start passing through over the next few weeks. Some of the coolest birds I have ever captured have been in September. Marsh wrens, varied thrush, pygmy owl, and white-breasted nuthatches have all been caught late in the fall. There is definitely good birding to be had over the next month. That being said, September banding can be very slow. There will be stretches of days when fewer than five birds are caught each day. Once and awhile that changes and suddenly birds will show up and things will become very busy. This already happened. September 1st became one of the better days of the entire fall. Yellow-rumped warblers, yellow warblers, Wilson’s warblers, northern waterthush, palm warblers, and a variety of sparrows were flittering in the trees and winding up in the net. 41 birds were caught that day. This was only a one day event, the following day only seven birds were captured. I find that the busy days and slow days are both enjoyable. After a summer filled with visitors and hectic schedules, September is a time to quietly relax and enjoy the fall smells, colours, birds, and the remaining days of good weather. During those slow September songbird banding days, my bird banding addiction is supplemented by northern saw-whet owl monitoring at night. Since the last report four saw-whets have been banded over the nine nights that banding has been attempted. Checking the records, the capture rate is on par with previous years. The records show that owl captures begin to pick up after the first week of September. I hope that this trend continues this year because staying up until 2 in the morning without catching any owls becomes tedious. A northern flying squirrel managed to find its way into the nets one evening. This was the fourth one to be captured since owl monitoring began at the LSLBO. Extracting a flying squirrel is an interesting process. They get extremely tangled and they curl up into a tight ball and gnaw at your hands. It takes some time to get them out and the net needs major repairs afterwards, but on a night when owls are scarce, those flying squirrels make the evening far more entertaining.

2010