It has been a nice little week; fairly sunny, warm and most importantly, calm. We’ve seen increased numbers of birds migrating overhead now that the air is still, including the first few flocks of Greater white-fronted geese. Banding has also improved with the calm weather and we are rapidly nearing the 1000 mark for this… Read more »
Weekly Reports
August 24 – 30, 2017
I feel like I have really talked about the wind a lot this year, but it’s hard not too when it is so constant. We’ve had another really slow week at the lab with reduced net-hours due to windy conditions. In the single calm day we banded just shy of forty birds of a good… Read more »
August 17- 23, 2017
After what seems like an eternity of wind, the weather has settled itself and we have had a couple calm days at the Observatory. Wind negatively effects our operations in many ways, firstly, songbirds don’t like to migrate in the wind. They are very light in weight in comparison to their surface area so it… Read more »
August 10 – 16
Another slow week at the LSLBO. We have been hampered by windy weather that forced us to keep our nets closed more often than not. We only recently cracked the 600 mark for the fall; typically we are around 900 by this time. The slow banding coupled with the lack of overhead migration is furthering… Read more »
August 3 – 9, 2017
Over the past week, migration has slowly picked up. We are seeing Tennessee warbler and myrtle warbler moving overhead in increasing numbers every morning. Still nothing like we expect to see this time of year, but it’s an improvement from last week. Other species that are steadily migrating are western tanager (in surprisingly good numbers)… Read more »
July 27 – August 2, 2017
Bird activity is still slow at the observatory, slow enough that we are starting to wonder if something is wrong. We spend our many hours of not seeing or catching birds speculating as to why we have so many hours to spend speculating. We have one main hypothesis that has a couple pieces of supporting… Read more »
July 20 – 26, 2017
Unfortunately it has been another slow week at the Lesser Slave Lake Bird Observatory. Not many birds have been seen actively migrating and even fewer have been banded. We partly blame the poor weather again, but even the nicer days haven’t produced much bird activity. Despite low levels of migration, there are still lot of… Read more »
July 13 – 19, 2017
After our spectacular start to fall migration, with 122 birds banded over 2 days, we all but stalled-out due to windy and rainy conditions. Over the last six days we have only caught around half that bringing the total for the season to just over 200. Not only has the banding been slow, but we… Read more »
July 6 – 12, 2017
Fall migration has begun! Well one day of it happened anyways, and what a day it was! Typically the first day of the season is slow, but today we banded 62 birds representing 18 species. Just over a third of those birds were hatch-year myrtle warblers. Canada warbler were also common in the nets and… Read more »
June 29 – July 5, 2017
Not a very eventful week this week. We finished off some counts and surveys and completed the third round of MAPS. Despite being in a lull right now, we know it is the calm before the storm. In less than a week we will be starting up fall migration monitoring and then we will have… Read more »