scooped by Joanne for first snow bunting of the year!!!

It has taken a long time , a very long time to attract snow buntings to corn this year. This year we have also moved to perfect snow bunting country  we are surrounded by with massive fields that grow soy and canola.  Every day I have either been putting out corn or kicking snow off  my corn piles. Joanne never lifted a toe to a pile or wandered out to put golden nuggets of snow bunting magnets on top of the snow, not a kernel!!!  In her defense she has been putting corn out at kerns public  where her and her students who we call the school of flock have been banding buntings for years. Three days ago all of our efforts were rewarded and both sites finally have snow buntings
 feeding on corn so the big question in my mind was who was going to be the first to band a snow bunting this year Me or Joanne?
         Today Joanne was heading to kerns public I had to dash off to the marsh for a few minutes. We live 8 minutes from the marsh so before I left I decided to put down a few traps on the corn knowing I would be back close to the time Joanne would be leaving for Kerns. Joanne left a little earlier than I had anticipated and just as I was leaving the marsh I received this photo.

Before she left for kerns  she watched a small flock of bunting descend around the traps and this  male scooted in a trap and she with a smile on her face gently removed this bird from the trap she banded it and sent me sent me the evidence . I arrived 2 minutes too late she had already left  and it took over an hour for the flock to return giving me the opportunity to band this bird.

Adding to Joanne's delight when she went to check on the corn at kerns she decided to flip her on traps  over  and managed to catch 5 more buntings but the first bird of the new year was this beautiful Lapland longspur!

If there is a lesson in all of this it is that Joanne is the queen of bunting banding, and I am  her banding serf, fit only to feed her birds so that she can band them. A job I am pleased to do with a smile. I am smiling now as I look forward to banding with the school of flock next week as the flock has grown in size affording us the chance to start banding. Allowing us to once again be engaged as part of the cooperative snow bunting banding network. Hopefully some of the birds that the kerns students band will find their way into other banders  traps or even fly as far as Greenland. Such are the thoughts I think of when I pile corn on the snow for Jo. Okay let's be honest, if anything I would be the court jester and perhaps there is yet one last laugh to come in the snow bunting story we are helping write. Stay tuned for the next chapter..... revenge of the jester.