Painting St pattys Day Green Red and Purple!!! and "Raise the Roost" fundraising campaign

A dazzling  after second year male common redpoll 

 The theme of the day was not only Irish green but  gratefully greenbacks in the form of  donations that made us happy. As for the birds it was the red in redpoll.  With the help of some young hands at the traps  and some experienced hands, enter thanks to Chris  Sukha we were able to band 97 more redpolls  which allowed us to pass the 1000 redpoll for the season.  When ever I think of banding at St ptricks day images of green and t shirts  usually fill my head as we often can toss away our winter coats and enjoy the warmth of a plus 3 day in balmy comfort . yesterday i hardly wanted to expose my fingers the frigid temperatures . I arrived to start the wood stove and it was a crushing minus 18.  The birds in the cold were quite active which is why we were able to band so many. All of the birds were caught in our 2 finch traps and our J trap.

Violet holding our 1000th common redpoll of the 2017 banding season . Most of them were caught after feb 16th

     So my initial plan was just to talk about St patty's day banding  and to put on lots of pictures of people with green hats.  So staying with the colour theme here purple definitely beat green on tis day. A young lady named Violet who tells me here very colour is purple  came out to the marsh to make a donation. In lieu of getting birthday presents she collected 120 dollars to donate to the marsh which I thought was just amazing. She is a nature lover and there family had past the marsh on the highway many times  and had never stopped in. Violet decided this year she wanted to donate to help nature and picked the marsh, we could not be happier. While she was there violet helped us at the traps and because we did not have many people out probably due to the cold she even helped me to band a few birds.  The neat thing about Violets donation is she was not even aware of the fund raising campaign that we are about to start and when we told her that her donation was going to go to  helping us  purchase a trailer for long term volunteers to stay at the marsh who are mostly  college and university students  she could not be happier. Actually I think she was happiest when she was holding a redpoll.

 

Violet making her donation in front of the giving tree . All people  donation to Raise the roost will have their names on the giving tree and will be put on a sign that will be mounted on the outside of the "roost" That donation is not for treats amigo!

  This Saturday we will be launching our " Raise the Roost" campaign to provide housing for volunteers. We are starting with a face book live event  and will be calling our members to enlist their  support.  You can find out more information about this campaign on our website www.thehilliardtonmarsh.com or our face book page. It has become clear to us especially after having volunteers from outside the area that the true backbone and ability to conduct our research at the marsh is our ability to house long term volunteers. These volunteers tend to be  University and college students. many of these students are hoping to either get their banding permits or are here to see and learn more about boreal birds.  These volunteers  come here knowing that we will provide a roof over their head  and they provide there own food. We quickly discovered  pleasing so many varied diets was  well lets say too challenging.  When Hilliard township sold their township hall we they moved their office upstairs above the community hall where they had been letting us house volunteers. So our plan is to purchase a  used  trailer that can sleep 6 to 8 and has a common area and a kitchen and bathroom. Our goal is to raise 40,000 to purchase a used trailer  have it transported to the marsh which is costlier then you would think.  We are very hopeful of having some trades folk help us with the hook up to well and septic.

Sarah and Pete pictured here  Pete was a volunteer from the UK and Sarah was our intern who stayed in the dorm for 6 months as our intern and she was still smiling

     Our find raising efforts have been boosted by the Gosling foundation which is matching donations up to 10,000 so there is a nice incentive for folks to know that there donations are going to be doubled  We are launching the campaign with a great deal of optimism this Saturday and have already had some pledges  and promises of donations to come. Having  place for the volunteers to stay really does  fill in the missing piece in our research puzzle. We are also a candidate site to become part of the Canadian Migration Monitoring Network and one area we need to be able satisfy is our ability to run the same number of nets  each banding season. the way we can be sure that we can is the ability to house and support volunteers. We already have a number  who have signed up for this spring . This  spring the group is going to have to be a hardy bunch as they are going to be tenting  as  we are going to have to wait to have money in hand to purchase the trailer so best case scenario is that the group starting in August and all those that follow after will have plenty of respect for the tent dwellers of the spring of 2018.  Hopefully when banding begins April 17th the temperature will be better then our projected first day of spring  -22 Celsius. So please spread the word  about" Raise the Roost" and support us if you can. If you would like  to learn more about volunteering during the spring or fall migration please let me know. Interestingly we already have more folks committed the the fall season currently then the spring, maybe they have already heard we are Raising the Roost!!!
 

Hopefully you have seen this poster before please copy and share  to anyone who wants to help support bird research

Our long time bander and friend  and artist Chis Sukha. Chris would be a great guy to call if you are trying to figure out that perfect gift for  the birder in your family. He is happy to do commissioned paintings for you so if grandma loves owls , Uncle  Fester loves  falcons or Kelly loves kestrels . As for this red winged  it is destined fr the roost but for now will hang in the bird house in a space of hounor 

redpoll reign at Hilliardton

beautiful after second year male common redpoll  the colour almost wills the snow to melt. Clearly I am urging the snow to melt and set the stage for spring migration.

Well  it has been a long time since I have written in the blog  and there is so much to write about but I am going to be single minded and write about redpolls. It occurs to me that single minded is a very odd expression when referring to such a flock oriented bird as redpolls.  There was a time that I wondered why we were banding redpolls until a redpoll banded at the marsh appeared in Alaska  and over the past decade it appears that we are almost the only site banding redpolls in Ontario. This is more due to snow conditions and the fact that in most years redpolls do not migrate much further then then the cover of the boreal so we have a unique opportunity.  Redpolls are known for having "irruptive " years  making it into southern Ontario but large flocks are usually predictable in the north. So far this winter we have banded  1, 487 common redpolls . 941 have been banded at the marsh, 413 have been banded at our Dawson point site and 133 have been banded by the school site at Kerns Public school.  A huge part of our success this year has been due to a donation from the Temiskaming Foundation to purchase some very effective traps and the construction of our J trap at the marsh which was also funded by the Temiskaming foundation as well. The great part of these traps is that it is a great way to introduce kids  to the world of banding that is stress free for the birds. We often see the birds enter the traps and after realizing they are caught the birds start to feed seemingly unconcerned about their momentary lack of freedom.
     We have been surprised by the lack of  hoary redpolls banded this year  as we have only banded 7 after a high of 60 last year. There is a great deal of speculation that this species is about to get lumped into a single species of redpoll but I believe this has not happened yet and I will leave it to greater minds to explain the rationale for making this taxonomic change .

Northern shrike  the gloves show the respect their bill deserves 

     Just recently the flocks of redpolls have been joined by birds that want to eat them and we were lucky enough at our Dawson point site to capture and band a Merlin and a northern shrike  as these species make their way north.  Each winter we have managed to capture a few shrike  but march seems to be the month we capture the most and the Merlin stands out as it is only the 4 th we have ever banded and 2 of these have been captured at Dawson point and both were in march as well almost to the day.

Merlin's  are always  exciting perhaps the fastest bird I have ever caught

     This years redpoll numbers  represent our fourth best year year having banded 1216 in 2011 and 1108 in 2015 and 999 in 2005. Numbers seem to be dropping dramatically the last couple of days and we are  catching a a great deal of retraps  right now suggesting that the flock at the marsh is mostly banded.  It has become a bit of a tradition over the years to mix green and red  as we celebrate St Patrick's day by showing interested observers how we band redpolls at the marsh . So perhaps you will make it out to the marsh and we will finish the phrase "Top of the day to you  with the customary Irish response ... and the rest of the day to you!!!! Happy St Patty's and happy birding. If you wish to join us take note we will be banding from 9 to 12  and will be featuring some Irish stew  made with wonderful grass fed beef form Marsh Meadows organic farm.

Ouch!!! waiting to happen