|
|
|
WINTER
POPULATION MONITORING |
|
Week
5: November 28 - December 4, 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: |
|
The tail of one of the
Slate-coloured Juncos banded this week. The narrow and
tapered
shape of the outer rectrix is one of the factors used in
identifying this as a hatch-year bird,
in this case a male by body plumage and wing length. We have
been recording the
extent of white on the tail, classifying the amount of it on the
outer three rectrices
(r4 to r6). This individual shows an unusual pattern in that
there is also a narrow white
tip to all of the other tail feathers. (Photo by Marcel
Gahbauer)
-
|
|
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. |
|
| |
THIS
WEEK |
THIS
WINTER |
2005
TOTAL |
SITE
TOTAL |
| #
birds (and species) banded |
27
(4) |
160
(10) |
4119
(84) |
5040
(92) |
| #
birds (and species) repeat |
24
(3) |
90
(5) |
831
(36) |
885
(41) |
| #
birds (and species) return |
2
(1) |
5
(2) |
77
(14) |
75
(14) |
| #
species observed |
23 |
41 |
164 |
170 |
| #
net hours |
12.0 |
63.5 |
5444.6 |
6419.1 |
| #
birds banded / 100 net hours |
225.0 |
252.0 |
75.7 |
78.4 |
|
|
Note: table does
not include nocturnal banding (owls) |
Bander-in-charge:
Marcel Gahbauer
Assistants: Shawn Craik, Barbara Frei, Marie-Anne Hudson
Notes:
Overall, temperatures remained below normal for most of the week, but
Wednesday and Thursday were quite mild and pleasant. On Wednesday, a
new species for winter was spotted, a White-crowned Sparrow. The next
morning, although the calendar turned to December, we had some other
seasonal rarities, including a Great Blue Heron gliding in to the south end
of Stoneycroft Pond, a male Red-winged Blackbird giving an odd call behind
the cabin, a pair of Mallards erupting out of the back ponds as we walked
past, and a pair of Common Mergansers flying along the far side of the corn
field.
Banding
this week took place only on Thursday, and was again very successful.
For the first time in over two weeks, American Tree Sparrows were back in
small numbers, and we banded a couple of them, along with a few of the many
Juncos still hanging around. Once again though the Black-capped
Chickadees and American Goldfinches dominated. We caught 25
chickadees, out of roughly 50 estimated in the area. Of these, many
were recaptures of birds banded in the late part of the Fall Migration
Monitoring Program, but several were originally banded in Fall 2004 or
Winter 2004/05, including two individuals with consecutive band numbers that
we last caught in February 2005! On the contrary, most of the
goldfinches we are catching continue to be unbanded, indicating that either
there is a very large flock in the area, or that the birds we are observing
are late migrants.
|
