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 »
Posts Tagged: Fall Migration Monitoring
August 31 – September 6, 2023
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
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
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
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
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
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 »
July 20 – 26, 2023
By Danika Wack- Boreal Educator Fall migration has officially begun! By the time you read this article, the Lesser Slave Lake Bird Observatory will be close to wrapping up our MAPS breeding bird program and our field staff will soon be able to focus solely on the birds that have already started heading south. While… Read more »
Migration Monitoring Volunteers
September 29 – October 5, 2022
In the Lesser Slave Lake Bird Observatory’s final article of the year, we look back at our Fall Migration Monitoring season. Every day, rain or shine, between July 12 and September 30 we were able to document bird movements at our monitoring site approximately 15 km north of town. Over these 81 days, we recorded… Read more »
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There has been another thrilling capture and it did indeed have long hind claws. These claws are hard to see when the bird is not in-the-hand, but they are this family's namesake. To discover who we banded read our weekly report: www.lslbo.org/weekly-banding-reports/september-14-20-2023/
It's that time of year again where we become night owls to capture these little owls! We have been running our owl migration monitoring program for two weeks now and it has been off to a slow start with half as many captures as this time last year. Read more: www.lslbo.org/weekly-banding-reports/september-7-13-2023/
It's not every day we are lucky enough to catch a Belted Kingfisher - in fact it has only happened twice in 30 years! Read more: www.lslbo.org/weekly-banding-reports/august-31-september-6-2023/