southern banders help band a couple of hawks

After the social we had the chance to take a couple of banders from the south out to see if we could catch a hawk. Recently the area seems to be hosting a number of roughlegged hawks and redtailed hawks. Catching hawks is very difficult and is often does not reward the effort it takes  but we had lots to catch up on so we headed out with high hopes and managed to catch a rough legged hawk and a young redtail.  The recent snow may ben the end of hawk season but we will soon be banding buntings. Hopefully we will have news about buntings soon. This photo is  of Theresa Mackenzie who made the trek up to take in the social and lucked out with a couple of hawks.

chris sukha returns in fine form to the marsh

Sometimes at the end of the banding season it takes a nudge to make a discovery. Chris Sukha returned to the marsh after being away banding in h B.C at Mackenzie bird observatory. So he made it back at the very end of owls and talked me into trying a few more nights. We managed to catch a boreal owls while he was out and an incredible 4 long eared owls. After  exchanging information and emails with other owl banders it turns out that we may be in area where we might actually be able to try for long eared owls by using a long eared call. one bander in northern Saskatchewan typically bands around 30 a season .  it is a pretty exciting prospect so we will give it a try. We ended up catching 7 for the season which is the best we have ever done our previous high was 5  long eared which we caught back in 2003 and we have caught a total of 24 over all of years. This year all of our long eared owls were caught while we were playing a boreal owl call.  Chris will be banding once again this spring at the marsh so hopefully if you have not met Chris yet you will this spring .  nice to have you back at the marsh Chris!!!

Rick ludkin a big hit at marsh social

I wanted to take a moment to thank Rick Ludkin and indeed all of the people who came out and joined us in a celebration of the marsh. Rick spoke to us about how the efforts of the banding station at kerns public fits into the Canadian Snow bunting network. I feel very privileged to have had rick come all the way from Ruthven Park where he bands. i also feel privileged to see so many friends come out to the marsh. Next year Maggie Macphearson has promised to come back and be our speaker as she will have finished her PhD and will have lots of news to pass along to us . Congratulations goes to Jacob Lachapelle our junior ebird winner and to Mike Werner who won the Sr. division. Well done!! Hope to see  many of the new faces we met at the marsh this winter . Thanks again to all who came and enjoyed the night and to all who had a hand in making the evening possible