Hooray! The birds have arrived! The diversity of species around the lab this week has exploded. Yellow warbler, black-and-white warbler, Lincoln’s sparrow, white-throated sparrow, Swainson’s thrush, least flycatcher, and western tanager, just to name a few, have arrived and are exuberantly advertising their presence with song. With an increase in birds in the area, we are starting to see some better banding totals. This makes more than just us banders happy, the educators at the Boreal Centre are also very glad to hear it since they are bringing school groups out for tours on an almost daily basis. The educators do a fantastic job whether or not we catch a bird, but being able to show students what we do is far more exciting than just hearing about it and we love fostering an appreciation of birds in young people. In the words of one impressed teenager who came out “I thought this would be a lame field trip, but birds are totally legit!” I had a winning moment this week. A few years back I was birding on Marten Mountain in the spring and saw a yellow-bellied sapsucker that was still in its juvenile plumage – something it should have moulted out of over the winter. A certain other birder didn’t entirely believe what I ‘thought’ I saw. The other day I caught a sapsucker in juvenile plumage. Solid proof that it happens. I Win. Besides that bit of fun, the highlight capture this week was a blackpoll warbler. We catch some of these warblers during fall when they are in their non-descript juvenile plumage, but it is uncommon for us to catch an adult male in its breeding plumage. Blackpoll warblers are a true wonder of the avian kingdom. They have the longest migration of any songbird in North America: an up to 19,000 km round-trip. In the spring they fly over land from Venezuela to northwest Canada and Alaska to breed but as arduous of a journey as that is, it pales in comparison to their fall migration. In the fall, blackpolls leave their breeding grounds and rather than fly south they head east, all the way to the Maritime Provinces. Once they are there, they bulk up for a few weeks and then fly out over the ocean in the general direction of Africa. Around Bermuda, they are swept up by the trade winds and blown into South America. For three days, they fly over 3000 km of open-ocean unable to stop to eat or rest at all. Any bird that isn’t strong enough will fall into the ocean and perish. When I know what these birds go through just to come up here to breed it makes me feel even more passionate about doing everything in my power to help them. Blackpoll warblers primarily nest in black spruce forests and bogs dominated by alder and willow. Both of these habitat types are sensitive to disturbances and take a long time to restore themselves if they are destroyed or altered. I, for one, hope that there will always be a home for blackpoll warblers in our northern forests.
Weekly Banding Reports
- September 29 – October 5, 2022
- September 22 – 28, 2022
- September 15 – 21, 2022
- September 8 – 14, 2022
- September 1 – 7, 2022
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3 weeks ago
Lesser Slave Lake Bird Observatory Society
SPECIAL MEETING
Date: Wednesday, March 15, 2023
Time: 4 pm
Place: Boreal Centre for Bird Conservation or ZOOM![]()
A Special Meeting of the members has been called to approve new Bylaws for the Lesser Slave Lake Bird Observatory Society. ![]()
Please RSVP for the Special Meeting by emailing info@lslbo.org or phoning 780-849-8240. A copy of the proposed bylaws as well as the ZOOM link for the meeting will be provided with your RSVP.
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2 months ago
Last summer, the LSLBO completed our 29th year of avian population monitoring at Lesser Slave Lake. It is always incredible how much our team at the station accomplishes each year, so check out all the highlights in our 2022 ANNUAL REPORT.
www.lslbo.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Annual-Report-2022.pdf![]()
Thank you to Robyn Perkins, Bronwyn Robinson, and Nola Sheets for all their hard work last season. And of course, thank you to all of our amazing supporters who help make all of this possible: Alberta Conservation Association, West Fraser, Vanderwell, Tolko Industries Ltd., Alberta Parks, Environment and Climate Change, TC Energy, Canada Summer Jobs, and all of our LSLBO members, staff and volunteers.
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2 months ago
Have you ever wondered what our LSLBO Bander in Charge does in the winter season? There is always a lot of program planning and paperwork, but sometimes Robyn gets to do some pretty cool things like helping to collect data for an owl research project. Awesome field day!
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