McGILL BIRD OBSERVATORY

WINTER POPULATION MONITORING

Week 4:  November 21-27, 2005

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. 

PICTURE OF THE WEEK:


One of six Mourning Doves banded on November 26, a remarkable number considering
that the cumulative total at MBO to date had been just five.  (Photo by Marcel Gahbauer)
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Special thanks to Wildlifers in Baie D'Urfe for donating the seed to stock the feeders for MBO's Winter Monitoring Program - click here for information about the store.

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  THIS WEEK THIS WINTER 2005 TOTAL SITE TOTAL
# birds (and species) banded 17 (4) 133 (10) 4092 (84) 5013 (92)
# birds (and species) repeat 18 (2) 66 (5) 807 (36) 885 (41)
# birds (and species) return -- 2 (3) 75 (14) 75 (14)
# species observed 18 37 164 170
# net hours 8.5 51.5 5432.6 6407.1
# birds banded / 100 net hours 200.0 258.3 75.3 78.2

Note: table does not include nocturnal banding (owls)

Bander-in-charge:  Marcel Gahbauer
Assistants:  Shawn Craik, Christina Donehower, Barbara Frei, Marie-Anne Hudson, Mike Mayerhofer, Betsy McFarlane, Mark O'Connor

Notes:  Yet again it was an abnormally cold week for November, and as has been the pattern throughout the month, we had only one morning of banding.  Having forgotten to take the nets in before the snow, we found one of them frozen shut; however, the other three were productive, with 35 birds caught in just under three hours.

To our surprise, we banded more Mourning Doves than any other species.  Previously we had never caught more than two in a day, and only five in total over a period of 18 months.  Over the past several weeks we have seen much higher numbers of Mourning Doves than ever before, likely attracted by the corn in the neighbouring field.  Nonetheless, it was still quite a surprise to band six of them in one short morning.

Another peculiar note from our morning of banding involves the two Downy Woodpeckers we banded.  Caught an hour apart at exactly the same point on net V4, both had the same age, sex, wing chord, fat, and weight!

The other highlight of the week was our long-anticipated first sighting of a Rough-legged Hawk.  It flew northwest over Stoneycroft on Saturday morning while we were at the nets.  It becomes the 170th species recorded since MBO was established in May 2004.

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