April 23rd was the big day this year – the day the Lesser Slave Lake Bird Observatory began spring migration monitoring for its 21st year. Once again the Observatory will be run by Richard Krikun and myself, Nicole Linfoot. This year, however, we will be joined by a third person: Ryan, who is scheduled to start in a few days. It will be interesting to have some fresh blood out at the lab and we look forward to delegating all the menial… I mean really fun and educational task to him. For those of you who have been following the LSLBO updates for numerous years, you may be thinking that April 23rd seems a kind of early start to the season. You would be correct in that thinking; we don’t normally start until the 26-28. The reason behind this year’s start-date is simply that the snow had the courtesy to melt early allowing us access to the lab and our netlanes without the tiresome chore of shoveling. Also, it has consistently been warming to above zero (we do not band if the temperature is below zero) a couple hours after sunrise every day. Despite being gung-ho to start the season, we are off to a slow start banding-wise primarily due to poor weather. It may have been above zero, but rain, snow and wind have kept the nets shut for over half the days that we have been out there. In addition to our limited net hours, there really aren’t that many birds around; somehow, even with our early start, we still managed to miss the bulk of the dark-eyed junco and American tree sparrow migration. These two species breed up at the arctic treeline and they seem to chase the receding snow all the way there. They arrive in areas just as the snow melts and are gone a few days later. We only ended up catching a few stragglers; add to them a few local black-capped chickadees and some ruby-crowned kinglets and myrtle warblers and we arrive at a total of only 21 birds banded so far. The early migrants may be well past, but thankfully many other species are starting to arrive. Myrtle warblers are becoming more abundant by the day, and American robin and various blackbird species are forming a steady procession overhead during the early morning. Tundra swans and greater white-fronted geese just arrived late this week and are getting us back into practice counting/estimating large flock sizes. The highlight of opening week happened in April 26th. It was an overcast, dreary and overall lack-lustre day when late in the morning we started seeing more and more raptors passing overhead. We don’t normally see many raptor species in our area; the only ones we typically see decent numbers of are bald eagle, sharp-shinned hawk and northern harrier. Not that day though! In the matter of only a couple hours we had counted 96 raptors representing 10 species. In addition to higher-than-average numbers of the common species, we also saw many rough-legged hawk, peregrine falcon, broad-winged hawk, and more.
Weekly Banding Reports
- September 21 – 27, 2023
- September 14 – 20, 2023
- September 7 – 13, 2023
- August 31 – September 6, 2023
- August 24 – 30, 2023
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3 days ago
Fall owl banding has been relatively slow, but it has been exciting including the recent recapture of a Northern Saw-whet Owl originally banded last October near Saskatoon. While migrating at night has many advantages, light pollution may have seriously impacted this little owls journey to the LSLBO. Find out more in our latest weekly report! ![]()
www.lslbo.org/weekly-banding-reports/september-21-27-2023/![]()
Image: Two capture locations for this Northern Saw-whet Owl with the light pollution levels in our area.
Map data obtained from lightpollutionmap.info
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1 week ago
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/
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2 weeks ago
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/
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