short and sweet 2 new arrivals

Rain always causes us grief. As i mentioned  rain means extra sleep but it also means we are missing birds. This morning it was raining at 5 so we went back to bed but waking later revealed it has stopped raining. Chris convinced me to go to the marsh but the skies were heavy with the threat of rain but in the end I was thanking Chris for convincing me. We only had 2 hours of banding but it was worth it  Today's new species were as follows

grey catbird any birders reading this will note the incorrect spelling but I can't help but make a Canadian statement!

The other  returning migrant was our first American redstart which is yet another example of how bird names are way better in French this is the Paruline Flamboyant!!! The flamboyant warbler is way better but you will need to see for yourself to decide

The weather this weekend sounds really good so come out and watch the banding  there are migrants arriving every day ready to dazzle you.  I cannot think of anything more miraculous than the migration from Central and South America to connect us to nature and to one another. The community of the marsh continues to inspire me as much as the journey of these winged travelers. So please make the trip to the marsh this weekend to celebrate the new arrivals.

Another traveler to the marsh  this spring  is Nicole our banding intern with our first grey catbird  she has traveled from Brantford to help in our migration monitoring . Thanks so much Nichole she first discovered the marsh on an owl banding trip with Nipissing University and may very well go on to study boreal owls at the marsh. her last name is Richardson which in the past was the name of the boreal owl. Coincidence I think not !!!!!!!

The last we read on the weather channel was today was going to be wet. Tired banders always greet the dawn with a certain amount of ambivalence . Rain means more sleep and no birds which is sad but sleep is so appealing. The morning revealed clouds and the threat of rain but no rain!!! Off we went and before we knew it we had nets up and 70 birds for 7 hours of effort . It was raining all around the marsh but whilke we had a few sprinkles we made out alright and found 2 beautiful common yellow throats and a savannah sparrow in the net as well as 19 other species.

savannah sparrow note the yellow eyebrow is much longer than the short yellow on the lores of a white throat

a white throaat for comparison

 

 Before I feel the pull of a comfy bed I wanted to thank the two people that are making this all happen our bander in charge  Chris sukah and our banding intern Nicole richardson

Chris Sukah

Nicole Richardson

More bird tales to follow

warbler "ketchup" to may 10th

I had such excellent plans to put out a blog every night before  going to bed but we have been so busy with life  which means I had three marsh meetings last week and it never happened  however it is time to catch up on the excitement we have been seeing at the marsh .
Over the last week we have banded 40 species  and 623 individual birds . Our highest daily total was may 8th when we banded 137 birds helped out in a big way by 38  yellow rumped warblers and 24 red winged blackbirds.   I am going to catch up with a bunch of photo's and some totals for the week and hopefully i can keep up . The week was incredible and we had some arrivals that were actually freaking us out as they were so early.  Case in point was the early arrival of a mourning warbler on the may 8th pictured here with an american tree sparrow these birds are usually seen on the opposite ends of the month of May

yellow warblers showed up on the 8th

also on the 8th this black and white warbler

orange crowned  warbler and a close up of the mourning warbler round out the highlights for the 8th

Not to be out down here are the new arrivals for the may 9th

here is a cape may warbler 

a chestnut sided warbler

a beautiful magnolia warbler 

the nick name for a blackburnian warbler is fire throat

On Sunday the 10th dragging ourselves out of bed we were rewarded with the stations 8 northern parula one of my favourite birds we also caught a veery but in our excitement did not get a photo

The warbler parade has been amazing if you find these birds amazingly beautiful please come to the hilliardton marsh and see for yourself  banding begins daily at sunrise and continues for 7 hours of magical migrant moments. Hope to see you at the marsh.

How do you spell migration? I spell it Chris Sukha!!!

The marsh welcomes hired bander Chris Sukha. he started the migration season April 28th and will be the bander in charge at the marsh this migration season. The Banding season officially begins May 6th but Chris is out getting his feet wet literally! He has had a chance to get some of the nets up and is off to a great start.


His totals for the first two days are as follows

Tuesday April 28th

62 juno's
48 american tree sparrows


Wednesday April 29th

24 American tree sparrows
7 junco's
4 red winged blackbirds
3 ruby crowned kinglets
1 white throated sparrow
1 song sparrow
1 sharp shinned hawk



These  birds have a special significance for me  because they were all banded while i was teaching in the hallowed halls of Timiskaming District Secondary School. These birds were banded because Chris has his banding license and hiring him allows us to operate as a migration monitoring site independent of me being there. The true significance of this is that as an organization  HMREC with the support of its members  and  donations and fund raising  and funding applications we have been able to make this important step. So thanks everyone for the support  in our important song bird research. Chris comes to us with experience from several migration monitoring sites he has volunteered and worked at places such as Mackenzie Nature Observatory, Thunder Cape in Thunder Bay and Long Point Bird Observatory on the shore of Lake Erie near Port Rowan Ontario. We are lucky to have Chris  with us and we are looking forward to a great banding season. The marsh will soon be filled with birds and the happy voices of school kids coming to learn about the marsh and the research we are doing and to see a bird or a frog up close. I can hardly wait. If you are not a school aged child and want to come out and meet Chris and the birds we are open to the public every weekend starting May 9th. Hope to see you there and thanks Chris!!

An exciting catch for the marsh

One of the things I have discovered over the years about banding is that I am so envious of new banders and birders  because their birding adventure is just beginning and the first spring everything is new and everyday the migration brings something new to the area on the wind. As a bander of many years it is a challenge to catch a new species but very now and then something very special happens

Last weekend i managed to catch and band a Merlin it was our first station record for a Merlin and this  male was after a flock of snow buntings i was trying to catch. needless to say the buntings were spooked and  my heartbeat was racing just as fast as the wing beats of the Merlin. I have never seen a faster predator in the quickness of its movements and it intent on the buntings. Fortunately I was at the right place at the right time. many people are talking about how many Merlins seem to be around this spring so perhaps I will not have to wait too long for another encounter with the next Merlin 

So lucky to have volunteers

One of the most exciting parts for me about the marsh and the community of folk that flock to the marsh is that people just seem to want to help out.  I was fortunate to do a talk recently for the Newliskeard Lions club. There is nothing I like more then to have a captive audience for half an hour to hear me blab about the marsh. Every now and then something I say triggers a reaction and someone steps up and wants to help out. Two weekends ago Eric Campsall and family came out to the marsh with 12 beautiful boxes he made . Thanks so much Eric!!

. Knowing the tree swallow population has dropped by over a third in northeastern Ontario in the past 20 years prompts many folks to want to help out. The easiest thing we can do to help is to be up bird houses. Bird boxes need to be cleaned out and monitored every year and we now have almost 300 boxes up around the area in suitable habitat. If you would like to learn more about how you can help tree swallows and bluebirds come to the marsh this Saturday at 10 and you can help with the clean out and installation of boxes. make sure to wear rubber boots and bring a pair of extra socks because there is a lot of water in the ditches . For more information and plans  check out the website. Hope to see you at the marsh Saturday April 18th.

happy world wetland day

I don't know how I never noticed that world wetland day was the same day as groundhog day the only thing that would make that better was if in Canada we had a wetland over grown rodent rather ground hog we would have our wetland dependent water hog the lovable beaver.
 So happy world wetland  and water hog day.



         While checking out the website that wetland link international has I was inspired by a section on their website where people could make a pledge to help wetlands . Not only where they trying to get people to commit to helping in whatever way they could they framed the pledge by asking folks what category they saw themselves helping in. The neatest part of the site was the international character of the pledge. people from around the world were signing up because disappearing wetlands are indeed an international problem and solutions are taking place from wetland to wetland. In my own pledge I realized that I actually do a pretty poor job of explaining wetlands to kids and why they are so valuable. My focus is so much on the birds that I forget that without the marsh itself  we would not have the bonanza of biodiversity that I want so many to experience. It's not that i don't think of how wonderful the marsh is itself. i truly do I would have to say that I have a love affair with the marsh. Whenever I am away I miss her and when I am at the marsh I feel whole . It is the perfect relationship. I am not going to carry on with this metaphor  as I think I am making my point and am not sure that I know enough about relationships to hold my own under scrutiny.  The real point I am trying to make is that I want to pledge to do more to help people understand the significance and beauty of the marsh and what better day to take this pledge then on world wetland day.
     If you are interested in taking the pledge here is the link


 http://www.worldwetlandsday.org/make-a-pledge

snow bunting bingo!!

The greatest thrill for any bird bander is capturing a bird that someone else has banded.  It is so exciting that extra care has to be taken to absolutely make sure that the number has been written down properly. We often will get a second observer  to  read and record the number, we also read the number backwards to make sure we have it right. In the olden days we would have to wait and call the number in and wait for the report to come to us. Now with high tech gizmo's and  government websites we can find out almost instantly where a bird was originally banded. When it was banded. Who it was banded by and how old the bird was at the time of banding. Catching a bird banded by another bander allows us to draw a line between two points, the original capture and the retrap sites. For me though it is the adventure between these points and the passion of the banders that is the real story. Of course the other important dialogue here is the biologists that are trying to make sense of it all.   Aldo Leopold said it so well when he wrote  "putting a band on a bird is to hold a ticket in a great lottery" Whenever we catch someone else's bird I always think bingo we just won the lottery!  It is hard to imagine all of the choices and challenges in the life of a banded bird  that  can lead this bird into one of our traps so many miles away from where the bird was originally banded.

       This past Saturday we recaptured our 6th bird banded just outside of Arthur Ontario by David
Lamble. David Lamble has banded more snow buntings then anyone else in Ontario and we have now established that we have a migration corridor between our two sites. This defied the original theory that southern flocks  breed and have different migration routes then their Northern cousins. These recaptures are showing that there is absolutely a migration corridor between Arthur and Timiskaming. We have also caught birds banded by David Lamble now in three different years of banding which shows even though it is still huge to catch what we refer to as a "foreign" bird  we are not surprised when his name pops up on a computer screen .Especially when we know how many birds he has put bands on.
     The other aspect of the snow bunting sojourn that defies my imagination is where these birds wander  and the possibility that one day one of our birds may end up in Greenland.  Birds banded in southern Ontario have been discovered in Greenland. To be more accurate some of the flocks in Timiskaming may be breeding in Greenland already but we just do not know it yet. As some of you saw during the marsh social  snow buntings were being banded in the arctic near Iqaluit which is a mere jump to Greenland for a bunting.  The work the kids are doing at Kerns Public is huge in helping paint a picture of the bunting migration. Thank goodness for those young banders at Kerns Public!! Not only have they caught some Lamble birds but three of their birds have been retrapped in Quebec. Two of them were caught not far from the Gaspe Bay which may have been a stop on their way to... you guessed it Greenland. Oh what it would be like to migrate to Greenland . Maybe one day I will just have to find out for myself. For now I will keep holding tickets to the most amazing lottery on the planet and keep banding buntings.