The Lesser Slave Lake Bird Observatory began Spring Migration Monitoring on April 16. Our goal is to count every bird on-site over the morning. Part of this program involves capturing birds to mark them as individuals with a metal leg band. After banding, we can tell a specific chickadee apart from all the chickadees in the forest.
By this time last year, we had banded 137 birds. Yet this year we are at just 45 birds banded despite the nets being opened for 60% more time thanks to the nice weather. With how slow it has been, I’ve had time to ruminate on an essay I first read over a decade ago. In A Sand County Almanac published in 1949, Aldo Leopold describes his banding activities on his farm in Wisconsin. The following excerpts are from this essay simply titled “65290” which resonates deeply with us this spring in spite of our many years and many kilometers of distance from Aldo.
“The tyro gets his thrill from banding new birds; he’s a kind of game against himself, striving to break his previous score for total numbers. But to the old timer the banding of new birds becomes merely pleasantly routine; the real thrill lies in the recapture of some bird banded long ago, some bird whose age, adventures, and previous condition of appetite are perhaps better known to you than to the bird himself. Thus in our family, the question whether chickadee 65290 would survive for still another winter was, for five years, a sporting question of the first magnitude.
65290 was one of seven chickadees constituting the ‘class of 1937.’ When he first entered our trap, he showed no signs of visible evidence of genius. Like his classmates, his valor for suet was greater than his discretion. Like his classmates, he bit my finger when being taken out of the trap. When banded and released, he fluttered up to a limb, pecked his new aluminum anklet in mild annoyance, shook his mussed feathers, cursed gently, and hurried away to catch up with the gang. It is doubtful he drew any philosophical deductions from his experience, for he was caught again three times that same winter.
He lasted five winters before disappearing on his sixth.
“I can only speculate on why 65290 survived his fellows. Was he more clever in dodging his enemies? What enemies? A chickadee is almost too small to have any. That whimsical fellow called evolution, having enlarged the dinosaur until he tripped over his own toes, tried shrinking the chickadee until he was just too big to be snapped up by flycatchers as an insect, and just too little to be pursued by hawks and owls as meat. Then he regarded his handiwork and laughed. Everyone laughs at so small a bundle of large enthusiasms.”
“65290 has long since gone to his reward. I hope that in his new woods, great oaks full of ants’ eggs keep falling all day long, with never a wind to ruffle his composure or take the edge off his appetite. And I hope that he still wears my band.”
Above: Chickadee 2980-83303 chewing Robyn’s finger once again on recapture April 17.
Most of the chickadees around the LSLBO are now banded and reacted identically to 65290 to the process. Already we have caught four chickadees from the class of 2024, of which chickadees 2980-82180 and 2980-82115 were hatched before 2024. Banded in 2000 and recaptured in September 2006, our oldest chickadee (1671-46871) was over eight years old. The oldest international record for a Black-capped Chickadee was almost 12 years old. On average, our chickadees are only two years old when they disappear from our records.
If you’d like to support us in telling these birds’ stories, we have just begun fundraising for our Great Canadian Birdathon.
By Robyn Perkins, LSLBO Bander-in-Charge
Full essay: Aldo Leopold. 1949. A Sand County Almanac: 65290.
