The trees are turning colours, the breeze is getting nippy, and the air has that amazing smell that can only mean one thing… Autumn is here. Fall migration monitoring may have started over a month ago, but it has only really started to feel like fall this past week. Plants and weather aside, there have been other signs of the changing of seasons at the observatory. For starters, our species diversity is shrinking rapidly; most of our warbler species as well as many sparrow species and the vireos, tanagers, blackbirds, and many others are gone save the last few straggling individuals. This is a bittersweet time – I love autumn. I love the warm but not hot weather, the lack of biting insects and the colours and smells, but hate saying goodbye to the beautiful songbirds that filled my summer days. I am taking time to appreciate every bird that gets caught because I know it could very well be the last one of that species that I will see until May. It isn’t all downhill though, that is the other sign of the arrival of fall: the diversity may be dropping, but it is starting to be slightly offset by the arrival of some of the far northern breeders. There are over a dozen species that we only see in early spring and then again in late fall as they travel to and from the tundra and high-arctic. This week we have encountered a few of these quintessential fall species. We banded both a slate-coloured junco and a golden-crowned sparrow and have seen several Lapland longspurs flying overhead as well as a golden-crowned kinglet foraging. The junco is the least impressive of the bunch, they can be found anywhere north of here that has thick coniferous forests, the longspur, though, spent their summer breeding up on the tundra right on the edge of the Arctic Ocean. The kinglet is a neat little northern breeder – they aren’t just passing through, they are actually arriving here – this is where they will spend their winter. Another species of bird that is synonymous with fall in the birding world will also arrive soon. Northern saw-whet owls breed all over northern Canada, including here is the Lesser Slave Lake region. Although they are present all summer, they are spread out in large breeding territories deep in coniferous forests; only in the fall do they become abundant and common in all forest types as they migrate south (to northern United States) for the winter. This year, like every year since 2004, we will be conducting saw-whet owl monitoring. Starting September 1 I will be out every night playing the owl’s breeding call near an array of nets in the hopes of catching saw-whets and banding them. Owl banding is one of the best things about fall. Last year we had the lowest capture rate on record, and most of the other stations across Canada reported similar results. Here’s hoping this year makes up for it.
Follow us on Facebook
On November 1st, we banded our last bird of the 2026 field season. Unsurprisingly, since Owl Fall Migration Monitoring is our last monitoring program to wrap up, it was this beautiful Northern Saw-whet Owl! In total we had an above average, but not record-breaking year with 165 Northern Saw-whet Owls and 7 Boreal Owls banded. Stay tuned for our full year in review when we publish our 2026 Annual Report in early January. Missing the birds already? Join us for the 32nd Annual Slave Lake Christmas Bird Count happening on Saturday, Dec. 19th this year! Stay tuned for more information soon. Note: Birds are handled by professionals and released unharmed as permitted by federal and provincial authorities.
On Sept 13, 2026, our owl researcher Robyn Perkins banded a young female Northern Saw-whet Owl at the Boreal Centre for Bird Conservation (band 1124-61706). She was a hatch-year (hatched this spring/summer) and heading out on her first migration. We were excited to learn that she was recaptured just a month later on Oct 15, 2026 at the Rocky Point Bird Observatory in Victoria BC. Despite her young age, she crossed the Rocky Mountains and already travelled over 1300 kilometers during her first fall migration! Even more amazing, this is the second Northern Saw-whet Owl originally banded by the LSLBO (2016) and later recaptured at Rocky Point BO (2018). Thank you to Rocky Point Bird Observatory for sending us such great pictures of this little traveller.
We are thrilled to announce that Birds Canada installed a Motus Wildlife Tracking System (motus.org/) tower last week at the Lesser Slave Lake Bird Observatory. A program of Birds Canada, Motus is an international collaborative research network that uses automated radio telemetry to track the movement and behaviour of small animals, like birds, bats, and even insects. There are almost 2500 Motus stations around the world and that number is growing every day! Motus stations are constantly listening for tiny, lightweight nanotags that have been deployed by researchers on small flying animals. When a tagged animal flies within 10 - 15 km of a tower, its unique signal can be detected and uploaded to the shared database managed by Birds Canada. If it is detected at multiple Motus stations, we can start tracking that individuals’ migratory movements. Situated on a major migratory flyway on Lesser Slave Lake, we are hoping that this Motus station will provide the opportunity to gain a better understanding of the migratory movements and habitat needs of the boreal bird species that we monitor at the LSLBO. For more information on the Motus program, check out motus.org. We would like to thank Birds Canada and Alberta Parks for all of their support for the establishment of the LSLBO Motus station!