Weekly Reports

It’s spring! Well it was spring and then winter came back, but spring will resurface… It always does. Regardless of the weather missing the ‘it’s spring’ memo, the birds got it. American robin, Slate-coloured junco, American tree sparrow, as well as tons of swans, geese and ducks have shown up in the Slave Lake region… Read more »

Last week I wrote about how fall migration was over and gave some approximate final numbers. This week I actually have the real numbers that I can share. A total of 2789 birds were banded representing 56 species. This is well over the average total of 1814 and slightly over the average diversity of 55…. Read more »

We have hit the end of the fall migration monitoring season. There may be a few leaves still lingering on the trees and the grass may still be green, but in regards to bird-life: winter is here. It will be a long, cold wait until bird-song is once-more the soundtrack of the outdoors. This is… Read more »

Birding, both in regards to banding and observations, has slowed significantly since my last article. It’s funny how one day there can be thousands of myrtle warblers migrating and foraging and then the very next day maybe five trickle through the area. That is the nature of bird migration, though, these birds are travelling and… Read more »

Holy! What a week! Bear with me while I assault you with some numbers. Gone are my worries about us hitting the average this fall; this past week we have banded 745 birds bringing the season total up to 2429 – well over the 1850 average. What is crazier than banding 745 birds in 7… Read more »

The weather has finally decided to play nice this past week and banding consequently picked up. The wind hasn’t been blowing and the mostly overcast skies kept temperatures low creating ideal migrating and foraging conditions for songbirds. With a banding total of 101 one day (our new busiest day for the fall) and two days… Read more »

This week was the last week for our summer student Robyn Perkins and it was also the last week for me doing songbird migration monitoring. Robyn will be moving back to Camrose to start her final semester of post-secondary and we will be sad to see her go – she was a great worker and… Read more »

As I write this August is winding down and September is approaching fast. The leaves are just starting to turn yellow at the observatory and it is beginning to smell distinctly of autumn. With the changing season we are starting to see more changes in bird diversity. With the exception of myrtle warblers, which have… Read more »

So remember in an earlier article at the beginning of fall when I said that we were unusually busy and I was curious if that meant we were going to get crazy busy during our peak or if we were using up all the birds and would have a super slow second half of fall?… Read more »

This week out at the observatory has been fairly unremarkable; it hasn’t been bad by any means, just not particularly remarkable. We have been banding around 30-40 birds a day and have just passed the 900 mark for our banding total. Overhead migration is still consistently heavy during the first half of the morning as… Read more »