Weekly Reports

As August slips away many of our long-distance migratory birds have departed for Central and South America so our counts and captures have slowed considerably. Soon we will say our last farewells to the few remaining stragglers and welcome tundra-breeding migrants.

We must also say goodbye to our seasonal staff. While it has been a long time coming, I’d like to introduce you to the Lesser Slave Lake Bird Observatory’s research team and what surprises they found this year.

From humble beginnings as the Field Assistant in 2016, Robyn Perkins has managed the station since September 2018 as the Bander-in-Charge. Every year she looks forward to experiencing the annual cycle of spring’s birds trickling in to make summer awe inspiring, followed by bittersweet fall partings. Although her love of birds was rediscovered in university, she is a local that enjoyed the annual Songbird Festival as a child when pancakes were still served in the monitoring station’s parking lot. She has been pleasantly surprised by how uncommon the Black Bears have been compared to recent years.

Another familiar face is Bronwyn Robinson from Ontario who has been with us since 2019. She discovered birding after getting a pet bird, but her favourite part of birding is that it can be done anywhere a person finds themselves. She keeps coming back for the mixture of familiarity and novelty that only birding for seven hours a day in one area can bring which both sharpens existing skills and introduces new experiences. Since she started working with us when our captures were exceptionally busy, she has been surprised how slow it has been as things potentially return to the station’s long-term normal.

New to us is Julia Ritter from Edmonton for her first year as our Field Assistant. The Covid-19 pandemic introduced many people to birding, Julia included. Her love for birds grew over walks in the Edmonton river valley and went with her for a two year stint teaching English in South Korea. She was most surprised by how much she was able to learn during her summer here (and will soon discover that the learning never ends). Next week she will be in Mexico City competing in Tae Kwon Do before returning to finish her contract and see some Northern Saw-whet Owl banding in September.

Another new face is a rare out-of-province volunteer. Although we also had a fellow from Texas join us for a short time this summer, Noam Givon has had a longer journey and joins us from Israel for the next three weeks. He is a general naturalist with some experience at a banding station in Eilat, Israel. He wanted to experience the Boreal Forest, but we were also the first station he found online that was in Canada, but not around Toronto. He has been surprised by the diversity of life our forest hosts and “by how stupid Bald Eagles sound”.

Feel free to come meet some of us during (potentially) the last of our drop-in tours on Wednesday and Saturday.

By Robyn Perkins, LSLBO Bander-in-Charge