Monday 27 February 2017

Ontario bird banding association rendezvous

the traditional shot at the sign notice the green snow 


I had the chance  joined by three other  Hilliardton marsh folk to gather up our stuff and head to literally the sunny south. Bird banders across the province gather at bird studies head quarters and listen to various speakers and share stories about our year of banding . This year the threat of bad weather on Friday prompted us to leave Thursday after school which gave us a chance to do some bird watching on Friday then enjoy a gathering of  the banders on Saturday. This year I was joined by Chris Sukha, Mark Milton and Ethan Quinton. We had a fabulous time and learned lots.


Mark Milton and Ethan Quinton




Ethan and Chris Sukha






Marsh hats are always in demand by southern banders here is Teri Groh






some of the thousands of canvasbacks on lake Erie




it will be six weeks before we see  sandhills in the north



A photo of a tufted titmouse  at old cut banding station


part of the crowd a bird studies canada  note all the photo's I love this room




I always find the folks that come to the meetings fill me with inspiration and validate the work that we are trying to do at the marsh. We heard some cutting edge research and discovered that a lot of the effort we are putting in is helping to shape a clearer understanding of what is happening to bird populations in north America. It is both humbling and a source of pride to be part of these wonderful research initiatives.  If anyone would like to know more about the Ontario bird banding conference do not hesitate to get in touch with me, Bird is the word!!!



Monday 20 February 2017

getting ready for momma duck

clayton quinton showing a duck nest with two common goldeneye eggs






Yesterday taking advantage of family day weekend for the third year in a row the Quinton family have taken on the job of cleaning out the duck boxes at the marsh.. That is a job that used to take two days with all of the terra kids on snowshoes  and now three snow machines and four people can clean out 40 boxes in four hours.






Clayton modeling his new kerns public school of flock hat also showing  the duck nest as well as a couple of common grackle nests  and showing a duck box with the side door open showing how we can access the box to clean it out and put in frsh shavings. it is critical that any kind of bird house must be cleaned out every year.


It is actually a big job to clean out the boxes and record the data for each box.  Each box  has to be cleaned out and fresh  shavings are put in  so the mother ducks  find a box that is perfect to lay eggs in. It seems strange that ducks will lay their eggs in hole in a tree  commonly referred to as a cavity but there are three species at the marsh that will use a cavity at the marsh. Boxes  basically are artificial cavities  and have the advantage of being easily cleaned with a side door giving access to the box. In nature  a cavity established either by a piliated woodpecker or a limb ripping off a tree establishing a cavity can be hard to find and a few seasons of breeding can  fill the cavity with nest materials. 



Once they team gets to the boxes  they open the box they record what species used the box. Conveniently the three species that use the boxes at the marsh all have different coloured eggs. Common goldeneyes have green eggs, wood ducks have brown eggs and hooded mergansers lay white eggs. The other species that will use the boxes are common grackles  and the odd time a sawwhet owl or a kestrel will use the boxes for nesting as well as they are species that also need a cavity to nest.




Jeff Mercier and Jason Black in the foreground and Curtis and Clayton Quinton Getting ready to head out  

One of the challenges of managing duck boxes at the marsh is that either due to ice movement or bears  the boxes sometimes come down and despite having a map of the boxes if a box has been pushed over they can be impossible to find in the winter.  The boxes are placed on 10 foot poles  that are pushed into the soft marsh bottom about four feet so they are in firm footing. This year the guys took GPS coordinates to help us find them.
common grackle nest

This year the marsh summer crew is going to focus on the boxes as we need to erect at least another 20 boxes as well as performing  some maintenance on the boxes. The nice part is that the crew begins at the marsh after the chicks have left the nests so the timing will be perfect. The challenge as well for us at the marsh is that the poles and the hardware for the boxes are not cheap and we need to fund raise for these items or reach out for donations to get this important work done. The keen issue here is something called egg dumping. For some reason if there are not enough boxes female ducks will sneak into another hens nest and will lay her eggs on another nest. Sometimes we will find nests that have over 16 eggs in it which are impossible for the original hen to incubate so the  eggs die. Sometimes we even find eggs from all three species in one nest!! The solution is to add more boxes which is our plan. If anyone knows someone that has some 10 foot poles that they might donate to the marsh please let us know as that would be a huge help in our efforts to help in duck conservation at the marsh.
Blast from the past 2005 kids on snowshoes helping clean out boxes. Guess that should have said kids from 2005  did not mean to infer we had 2005 kids helping.


If anyone would like to come and help out this summer as we put up boxes please get in touch the more the merrier. As well the guys tell me that they love checking the boxes and it is a great family outing. I am sure Curtis would welcome some help so if there is someone out there with snow machines  that would enjoy helping please get in touch and we will get you busy next year.  Until then it is always a serene feeling for me knowing that the boxes have been prepared and are waiting for the ducks to return not only to the perfect wetland habitat but to a habitat that also has the cavities that they so desperately need to breed So a big thank you to Curtis Quinton and his team for providing the wood ducks,the common goldeneyes, and hooded mergansers with  clean boxes. Let the migration begin!!! The sad news is we have to wait almost 2 more months for the marsh to be open, wish I had learned patience. Guess I will head to the marsh and try and band a few more evening grosbeaks life is pretty sweet for a northern bander !! Bird is the word!!



story left in the snow 

Sunday 19 February 2017

family day fun and everyone still has their fingers


what a great photo by Mark Milton






In Ontario we have a holiday called family day which has meant whenever the weather allows we brings families together at the Hilliardton marsh and band birds and get families outside to make those all important connections to nature .  Richard Louv author of Last child in the Woods  has started to use the term Vitamin N. So Saturday February 18th we  played the role of marsh doctors and tried to give kids a good shot in the arm of vitamin nature. We had approximately 60 visitors that had a chance to see some birds and get a chance to snowshoe and have a chance to eat some bannock.  As we have been reporting the birds are a bit scarce but we did manage to catch and band 5 more evening grosbeaks  bringing our record setting season to 157.  What follows is photographs of the day I would like to thanks everyone for bringing their kids out to enjoy the plus 7 Celsius  weather and to all the volunteers that made the day a great success.

feeling safe away from the commotion









Josh and his Mom made us some bird bags which we are always appreciative of thanks so much!!






Vitamin N and they did not feel a thing 




On the trial to bannock



Erin and Kim hard at work



Gee with some bannock

watch the birdie



Hard to find a jacket that a male evening grosbeak can blend in with


Thinking a bird was just released 















banders have more to do then just band birds 






Our campaign to raise funds for the marsh. If you would like to help us help you please visit our website to see how you can get a tax receipt  for making donations to your marsh www.thehilliardtonmarsh.com

Wednesday 15 February 2017

evening grosbeaks part 2 The stats

male and female evening grosbeaks 


Well as promised I wanted to look at the stats of evening grosbeak numbers  to try and put our banding season into perspective. When I looked back at the Ontario bird banding journals I only had journals dating back about 12 years which lead to to suggest that the marsh was having a provincial record breaking year.  Fortunately I was able to send send out a request to other Ontario banders  and one of them sent me the historical numbers of evening grosbeaks  banded since 1960.  The first thing I would point out in my defense is that the  numbers show that if you go back to 2002 until present day the maximum number of grosbeaks banded  was 115 which made us feel that we were in great shape. We are currently sitting at 141 grosbeaks banded as of March 13th. I felt that we were making a contribution to helping understand what is happening to grosbeaks moving forward and that the potential for some of these grosbeaks to show up at another banding station or indeed being re-trapped by us in subsequent years would be a worthwhile contribution.  Then I looked at the historical numbers and see that the provincial number of banded grosbeak was  3711 back in 1983.  To put that into perspective the total of banded evening grosbeaks  since 2002 adds up to  823!!!  I cannot imagine  what the size of the flocks must have been for banders to  handle that many birds.  I am headed to the Ontario bird banding  annual conference  at bird studies Canada in Port Rowan  in a couple of weeks and I am looking forward to seeing  some of the banders that were actively catching evening grosbeaks  back when they were so plentiful. The sad news as I mentioned in a previous blog is that there numbers have dwindled to the point that they are now a federal species of concern and perhaps makes the chance to get a band on a bird even more significant for the chance to help track the movements of these boisterous brilliant birds. Try and say that five times fast.  I cannot help but think that the possibility that these birds would be in such low numbers would never have occurred to them when they were banding  so many in the 1980's
     A friend of mine is always pointing out that the last big outbreak of spruce bud worms was in the 1970's and 1980's which perfectly coincides with the the high banding totals that you can look up in the table below . Some may feel that we should not be basing our estimates on populations that were at their peak. This does not however  account for  the fact that grosbeaks are extremely nomadic and will migrate searching either for outbreaks of spruce bud worm or perhaps looking for  feeders with their other favourite food sunflower seeds as feeder watchers will attest to.  One of my concerns about the population dynamics is that is seems unlikely that there should be 50 year  gap between cycles of spruce bud worm outbreaks. Clearly resource management has had an impact on these outbreaks. Perhaps aerial spraying and fire suppression influenced these cycles with a clear impact on the cross Canada population of evening grosbeaks. I for one am glad that they have been listed as a species of concern which will result in a management plan with some suggestion about monitoring  the population moving into the future. I asked Kevin Hannah a Canadian Wildlife Service biologists what he thought about the decrease in population and this is what he sent me. 


"In terms of “normal” levels, I think we’re way below any historic population size. According to the data I’ve seen, based on the Breeding Bird Survey, the Evening Grosbeak population has declined by 86% over the 44 year period from 1970-2014. Much of these declines appear to be from eastern Canada. The most often cited reason for these declines is the control of spruce bud worm and the huge reduction in the size and frequency of outbreaks. Other threats include a loss of habitat due to commercial forestry, mortality from collisions (e.g. windows and cars), and habitat loss/modification due to climate change. As with many species, there’s very little evidence of a direct cause and effect relationship between population changes and these perceived threats, so not exactly a slam dunk in terms of the ultimate causes. There has been, albeit small and localized, a recent increase in spruce bud worm activity in Quebec and parts of Ontario. As a result, there seems to have been some bigger winter “pulses” of this species in the past few years. Perhaps this is a sign of the linkage between this species and bud worms, and signs that populations might be slowly improving. "

      It really is interesting that the last two years we have had our best years for  evening grosbeaks at the marsh and in pockets around the northeast. Again my birder friend mentioned that he saw some flocks of evening grosbeaks in the hundreds one flock potentially near  700 not far from Gowganda. I am curious where the the bud worm outbreaks in Quebec where and how close we are to them. 
      One thing I can say for certain is that  Hilliardton marsh researchers are  excited to have evening grosbeaks this year in the numbers that we do and we will do our best to be part of the research of these beautiful winter finches. The more birds we band the greater the chance for a recovery and adding yet another piece in the puzzle. In addition to the feather isotope study we are helping with I did let the Canadian Wildlife Service know that we have a motus tower  that allows us to track birds fitted with a transmitter so perhaps in the future there are more ways the the hilliardton marsh can help monitor the future health of such spectacular birds. If you have any stories about evening grosbeak numbers historical or otherwise I would love to hear from you. Bird is the word!





Species Number
Species Name
Country or State/Province
Year
Bandings
Count
Encounters
Count
5140
Evening Grosbeak
Ontario
1960
2,379
133
1961
375
110
1962
590
31
1963
195
25
1964
435
27
1965
240
22
1966
344
27
1967
0
5
1968
143
13
1969
170
15
1970
13
16
1971
53
13
1972
306
14
1973
46
11
1974
82
9
1975
1,019
25
1976
297
16
1977
1,647
17
1978
1,515
19
1979
1,921
29
1980
2,175
14
1981
845
11
1982
760
9
1983
3,711
28
1984
909
12
1985
1,916
10
1986
626
1
1987
531
2
1988
486
7
1989
159
2
1990
539
6
1991
199
3
1992
222
2
1993
215
0
1994
296
4
1995
788
2
1996
279
2
1997
173
1
1998
105
1
1999
79
1
2000
149
0
2001
349
0
2002
80
0
2003
108
0
2004
70
0
2005
54
0
2006
25
0
2007
49
1
2008
20
0
2009
2
0
2010
115
0
2011
56
0
2012
96
0
2013
17
0
2014
14
0
2015
33
0
2016
84
0
Totals:
28,104
696