September 28 – October 3, 2023

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On October 3, Fall Migration Monitoring at the Lesser Slave Lake Bird Observatory ended after 84 days. We normally end on September 30, and this is the first time since 2008 that we pushed into October due to the unseasonably warm weather, which may have delayed movements of some short-distance migrants. It remains unclear if… Read more »

September 21 – 27, 2023

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Fall migration continues to be unusually slow. The nights have been warm and the owls sparse, but there are other things of interest in the dark hours from the odd deer, flying squirrel, or bear to spectacular northern lights and migrating geese. It may come as a surprise that most migration occurs at night when… Read more »

September 14 – 20, 2023

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Another slow week of migration (thanks mostly to strong winds) has concluded with an exciting capture: the Lesser Slave Lake Bird Observatory’s sixth ever Lapland Longspur. Though we may see them near daily in the late fall, they are quite unlikely to find themselves in our nets. The last one banded was back in September… Read more »

September 7 – 13, 2023

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We have finished our second week of owl migration monitoring at the Lesser Slave Lake Bird Observatory. There are two species that we target here. The first is the Northern Saw-Whet Owl, one of the smallest owls in Canada (second only to the Northern Pygmy-Owl) and our most frequent flier. Since the program began in… Read more »

August 31 – September 6, 2023

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As we enter September, fall migratory movement has been very slow, the bulk of which has been Myrtle Warblers in foraging flocks and occasionally landing in our nets. Yet this past week a rare and exciting capture was made: the Lesser Slave Lake Bird Observatory’s second ever Belted Kingfisher—and first ever female. The last Belted… Read more »

August 24 – 30, 2023

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The Black Bears have finally begun to agree that there are no berries left at our station and have made themselves scarce, so we have started opening our ground-level nets. To compare capture rates between time periods with different effort put into netting, we keep careful track of when we open and close each net… Read more »

August 17 – 23, 2023

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In another week of sharing our station with Black Bears we were forced yet again to frequently keep our twelve ground-level standard nets closed and rely on our two mid-canopy aerial nets. However, less frequent bear encounters let us open the ground nets a few times and we were able to band 632 birds this… Read more »

August 10 – 16, 2023

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Following August 10’s rain that stilled bird activity, things were looking up for us as we were able to open our ground level nets for most of the next two days. The good luck was not to last as last week’s Black Bear made a reappearance to again close our ground level nets as a… Read more »

August 3 – 9, 2023

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Our past week has seemed to drag on not necessarily because the birds were not moving, or because of a single Grizzly Bear sighting, but because one stubborn and difficult to spook Black Bear has made us keep most of our nets closed. While we have been opening our two nets that are raised up… Read more »

July 27 – August 2, 2023

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On July 30, 2023, the Lesser Slave Lake Bird Observatory concluded the second of our four core monitoring projects: Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship (MAPS), which focuses on breeding birds. With Spring Migration Monitoring a distant memory, all that is left is to continue our Fall Migration Monitoring until October, and to wait for Northern… Read more »