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McGILL BIRD OBSERVATORY |
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Welcome to the McGill Bird Observatory weekly report. Click here for a complete listing of our archives. Comments or questions are welcome at mbo@migrationresearch.org.
Bander-in-charge:
Marcel Gahbauer Notes: If we had any lingering doubts at all about migration being underway, they were erased this week. The 156 birds banded were nearly as many as in our peak week this spring, but in just half as many net hours! For bird highlights this week, it's difficult to know where to begin. Our site checklist rose by two species to 159, with the addition of Canada Warbler on Friday and Olive-sided Flycatcher on Saturday - two birds we had expected for a long time, but never found until now. For the year, we also added Red-breasted Nuthatch. Our list of species banded also increased nicely this week, with Eastern Wood-Pewee, Mourning Warbler, and the aforementioned Canada Warbler joining it. Several species were much more common in the nets this week than ever before. Until now we had banded only 4 Indigo Buntings ... this week alone we had 13! Similarly our Nashville Warbler jumped from a previous total of 10 to 28, and we doubled our cumulative count of Great-crested Flycatchers from 3 to 6. Worthy of honourable mention are the Rose-breasted Grosbeaks, with a single-day record of 6 on Saturday, for a total of 27 this year. The most common species of the week, however, was Yellow Warbler, with 19 banded and a few males from spring recaptured. Also this week we hosted two groups of visitors. On Friday, we had three 'ringers' (aka banders) from Finland and Latvia join us for the morning. We greatly enjoyed the opportunity to exchange information about banding techniques, and the different (and in some cases same) species we encounter. On Saturday we had a group from Bird Protection Quebec spend the morning with us, and they made their mark by finding our first Olive-sided Flycatcher, as well as the first Purple Finch of the fall season.
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