McGILL BIRD OBSERVATORY

WINTER POPULATION MONITORING

December 2010

Welcome to the McGill Bird Observatory weekly report.  Click here for a complete listing of our archives.
Comments or questions are welcome at "mbo AT migrationresearch.org".

PICTURE OF THE MONTH:



One of our resident banded Black-capped Chickadees hanging out near the feeders.
(
Photo by Greg Rand)


MBO gratefully acknowledges the in-kind support provided for winter 2010-2011 by CCFA (Centre de Conservation de la Faune Ailée) in Montreal, in the form of bird seed to keep the MBO feeders stocked throughout the season.

 

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THIS PERIOD

THIS WINTER

2010 TOTAL

SITE TOTAL

# birds (and species) banded

--

378 (18)

8060 (81)

31569 (106)

# birds (and species) repeat

--

68 (8)

1166 (52)

5507 (68)

# birds (and species) return

--

11 (4)

187 (33)

807 (37)

# species observed

14

40

162

202

# net hours

--

109.0

9709.9

49617.1

# birds banded / 100 net hours

n/a

346.8

83.0

63.6

Note: table does not include nocturnal banding (owls)

Banders-in-charge:  Simon Duval, Gay Gruner
Assistants:
 Greg Rand

Notes:  After a record busy year at MBO, we decided to largely take December off, aside from keeping the feeders stocked for our feathered friends.  We only collected formal observations once during the month, on December 20, when small numbers of 14 species were present. 

This month’s top 5   [last month's rank in brackets]

# individuals banded

mean # individuals observed daily

 

1.  Black-capped Chickadee (9) [6]

 

2.  American Crow (8) [2]

 

3.  Slate-colored Junco (6) [5]

 

4.  Blue Jay (3) [10]

 

5.  American Goldfinch (2) [7]

 

5.  White-throated Sparrow (2) [-]

 

5.  Hairy Woodpecker (2) [-]

With only one day of observations, the top observations of the month are of course entirely biased by what we happened to see that day.  However, the presence of chickadees and juncos within the top three is quite representative of this winter to date, based on anecdotal observations around the feeders.

To all our readers, thank you for your interest in our reports, and we look forward to sharing more exciting news from MBO in the new year! If you haven't yet had an opportunity to review our first five-year report, we encourage you to download a copy by clicking here (15 MB file, PDF).


The landscape at MBO has become decidedly winter-like this month.

(Photo by Gay Gruner)


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