 |
| 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 |
No comments:
Post a Comment