Posts By: corik

Fall migration is definitely still in full-swing; we were a little worried that things were winding down after a slow start to the week, but the last few days have been the busiest we’ve had all season. Many species have been building in numbers and are just starting to peak, like myrtle warblers, but some… Read more »

MAPS is done! I I do like MAPS, it’s just that once fall migration starts and the two programs overlap it can become quite stressful. As a brief recap, MAPS is our summer banding program; we run four sites, six times each, in ten day intervals. The reasoning behind only visiting each site once every… Read more »

the bird observatory. Late last week and into the weekend we experienced nothing but high winds and intermittent rain showers. The rain alone wouldn’t have been bad – it prevents us from opening the nets, but sometimes we can witness very heavy migration during rainy days. The wind was the real downer – birds won’t… Read more »

After a slow start, fall migration seems to be picking up out at the Lesser Slave Lake Bird Observatory. Every day we see an increase in the number of songbirds heading south overhead. These birds can be extremely challenging for us to identify. For starters they are high in the sky and little more than… Read more »

For me one of the most interesting subjects in the scientific world is speciation. Speciation is by definition ‘the evolutionary process by which new species arise’. Although there are different ways that a species will diverge into multiple species, there is one thing that hold true for all speciation events and that is that a… Read more »

It is hard to believe that fall migration monitoring will be starting in just a couple of days. Normally I say that solely for the benefit of readers who can not believe that birds would already be thinking of heading south, but this year, that is how I feel. Our summer period seems to have… Read more »

In celebration of the wonderful weather I am sitting out on my deck to write my article today. As I write, the pair of tree swallows that nested in my birdhouse are busily coming and going with mouths full of insects to feed to their hungry chicks. These swallows seem remarkably brave little birds. They… Read more »

Last week I got a very interesting call. It was the Information Officer, Michelle, from the Boreal Centre calling to tell me that a man was there who wanted help identifying a picture of what he believed to be a bay-breasted warbler hybrid. Naturally I was skeptical but curious. Hybrids are very rare in the… Read more »

After all that talk in my last article about being crazy busy this week, I am astonished to report that we have already (miraculously?) pulled through it. We finished our first round of MAPS banding, Richard outfitted ten Canada Warblers with radio transmitters and coloured banded many more up in High Prairie and Kevin Fraser… Read more »

Spring migration monitoring officially ended June 10, throwing us into what will be our busiest time of the year. Traditionally our summers were spent just doing our MAPS program (Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship) – which involves banding breeding birds at four specific locations deeper in the forest, and getting caught up on net repair… Read more »