Bander-in-charge:
Marcel Gahbauer
Assistants: Shawn Craik
Notes: There
was no banding this week, due to a variety of inclement weather.
However, over the course of three visits to check on the activity at the
feeders, 14 species were observed, including our first Northern Shrike
observation of 2006. Just as interesting was seeing a new species
take advantage of the feeders - see the photo below.
While there was little
of note at the site this week, we received interesting news of a
different sort from the Bird Banding Office in Ottawa early in the week.
The foreign-banded American Goldfinch we captured in
November 2005 has been identified ... and it
is from Laval! It was banded at Boisé Papineau in early October
2005 as part of a small-scale banding program that has been operating
for more than a decade. This is the only other active banding
project in the greater Montreal area (aside from some species-specific
research), and as such it should not be surprising to have some exchange
of individuals with MBO, but this is so far the only such case.
Crows
are not normally considered feeder birds, but on Sunday three of them
were on
the ground below the platform feeder and around the nearby mixed seed
feeder, that
suspiciously had been knocked to the ground. The crow in the photo
above flew to the
top of one of the adjacent conifers to watch while the feeders were
replenished.
(Photo by Marcel Gahbauer)
