non standard tuxedo's and lessons from the school of flock

Banding at the hilliardton marsh does not really begin until Monday May 2nd. That is when we begin our standard protocol. Being retired however gives me the privilege and pertinence  to involve people  in the migration web when I can. The last two days  all of the  southern american tree sparrows  and  junco's have arrived in full force. So many people have been contacting me and asking me what the "tuxedo" birds are. I have always loved that name to describe junco's.

They always arrive  with their companion throng of  american tree sparrows. I have always felt that they push along any late redpolls. It is almost like  being a leaf fan and lingering too long at a playoff party and knowing that it is really time to leave the ice and snow and  head to the golf course.  We still managed to catch a  couple of redpolls that are in migration denial and are still lingering .

Totals for today will follow.  I was very lucky to get to band a couple of hours during recess and Phys Ed time with those wonderful kids at kerns public. I will never be able to describe how lucky I am to be surrounded by enthusiasm and admiration for birds. The kindergarten kids have charts of birds seen at the feeders by their "wonder windows. "

The grade 5 and 6 kids after all of their trap experience with snow buntings are moving to the next step of learning how to take bird out of the nets. I often have to take a step back and realize how cool and unique this is. The best part of sharing birds and banding with these kids  is they celebrate every new arrival and  each others success at taking birds out. They have also accepted as young extractors there are many birds they cannot take out yet. They call these "murph birds" I am prouder of these birds as they have accepted it is more important about the birds being taken out safely than the security of their ego's. I have witnessed adults that could do well to learn from this fantastic group of kids we call "school of flock"

Kerns  public school banding  2 nets  1.5 hours April 25th

junco's                             33
american tree sparrow     16
purple finch                      3
common redpoll               2
pine siskin                        1
common grackle               1

54 birds   6 species

April 26th Hilliardton marsh

Today my banding at the marsh  would not have been possible without the help of three  kerns public students  and  marsh volunteer and director and wonderful scribe  Delphine Churman.

 The very first net check revealed  that it was going to be a great day when we caught 4  evening grosbeaks. I insisted that we stop for a moment to take photo's of the grosbeaks  but Pacey, Cameron and Gabe  were not  reassured by my notion that while they might bite it is not too bad.

  We banded a couple of hours and  did very well. Young birders  and banders often want to catch a new species. Today for these kerns kids the bird of interest was a red winged blackbird but before we caught the red-winged we caught and banded  a fox sparrow  a bird we often never catch and the ever nomadic  evening grosbeaks.

      The challenge for new banders is that they want to catch as many birds as they can but it is only when things slow down that we have time to train. Today we had a bit of both. A very busy morning followed by a windy late morning of not too many birds giving us the chance to have three young banders band their first birds.

If these young banders keep up the interest they may make it to the next level of marsh bandit. At this point they will be able to help independently with research at the marsh and consolidate their skills. For these kerns kids this is a long way off but they did impress me today and their efforts  and  enthusiasm helped us catch the following 68 birds

April 26th marsh totals

american tree sparrow     42
slate coloured junco         11
evening grosbeak             4
song sparrow                     3
chickadee                           2
white throated sparrow      2
ruby crowned kinglet          1
fox sparrow                        1
red-winged black bird        1
american kestrel                  1


68 birds  10 species

Thanks to Delphine Churman  and Kerns Public kids

Pacey Aitchison
Cameron Aitchison
Gabe Neill

Milton's migration update

As promised the other day when i was catching up the banding stats  i mentioned that Mark would have his update to follow. i think it is worthwhile  to have this info and unfortunately we could not do a census at the marsh the other day but with so much back it sure would have been worthwhile . next week without the snow we will have easier access to the marsh proper. thanks for doing these mark they are wonderful and people get a snap shot of how much fun it is to bird in Timiskaming



Milton's Migration Forecast #5 – April 18-24, 2016
What a difference a week makes, and it just happened to be the one designated as “Migration Week!” I’m feeling quite smug, as nearly all of my predictions for last week returned to Timiskaming over the weekend, although the sheer volume of reports made writing the forecast difficult; it seemed like the birds were arriving faster than I could type!
Lesser Scaup and Northern Shoveler were discovered in New Liskeard April 12 b...y Bruce Murphy and Mike Werner respectively. The migration then took a day off, to return with a vengeance on Thursday, April 14. Bruce picked up Song Sparrow and Sandhill Crane at the Marsh, while Vic Roach reported Sharp-shinned Hawk and an early Broad-winged Hawk in Chamberlain Twp., Mike Werner saw a Northern Flicker in Kerns Twp., and I found American Black Duck at Hill’s Lake along with Hooded Merganser, which were reported by Sue Nielsen from Sharpe Lake the same evening.
On April 14th a Brown-headed Cowbird was spotted by Kerns School of Flock students at Kerns Public School. On April 15th a Fox Sparrow was discovered by Serge Gendron in Englehart, Nicole Richardson found American Woodcock and Wilson’s Snipe at the Marsh, and Mike Werner saw our first Northern Pintail and Green-winged Teal at Moose Creek near the Casey Marsh. The next day, Wood Duck was spotted in Casey Twp. by Serge Gendron, who also found Ring-necked Duck at Hill’s Lake. At the New Liskeard Sewage Lagoons, Mike Werner was volunteering for HMREC cleaning out Swallow nestboxes when he discovered Greater Yellowlegs, Double-crested Cormorant, and, you guessed it, Tree Swallows. Thanks to all the volunteers who made sure the boxes there, at the Marsh, and along Hwy 569 are all ready for immediate occupation. Nicole Richardson reported Yellow-bellied Sapsucker from Hydro Line Road. On Sunday, April 17, Bruce reported both Ruby-crowned and Golden-crowned Kinglets from the Marsh, while Serge Gendron found Bufflehead at the New Liskeard lagoons, and Mike Werner discovered American Wigeon at Belle Vallee.
It seems that the only species I predicted that didn’t show up was Belted Kingfisher. In the coming week we should see Pied-billed Grebe, Chipping Sparrow, Common Loon, Eastern Bluebird, Blue-winged Teal, and Swamp Sparrow. Although uncommon, my records show that Short-eared Owl is a possibility. And a bird that will start a whole new chapter in our migration records, Yellow-rumped Warbler, has its average arrival date as our earliest warbler on April 24.
As always, we encourage you to report sightings of these, or any birds, to eBird.ca or timbirds.info, or even with a brief posting here. The more eyes we have on the birds of Temiskaming, the more accurate our records, and the more informed we become in our efforts to protect them.
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Cavities needed this is not being "anti-dentite"

So before I start writing this  anyone who is a Seinfeld fan will probably be disappointed and anyone who is not a Seinfeld fan will have absolutely no idea what I am talking about. I am somewhere in the middle and  I am the one writing this  so without risking losing anymore readers I will get to the point.  If you are a tree swallow or a bluebird  cavities are a very good thing. Indeed they are absolutely essential to building a nest.

tree swallow nesting in a box

Ecologists talk about limiting factors. These are the things that will potentially limit the size of a population. many will know that tree swallows belong to a group of birds known as aerial insectivores. Aerial insectivores as the name suggests, eat insects  while they are flying. This group of birds  is in perilous trouble and are experiencing dramatic declines. In northern Ontario the population dropped by over 30 percent  between  1985 and 2005. This was recorded in the results of 2 Ontario breeding bird atlas projects.  The next breeding bird atlas is slated  to begin in 2021 and takes 5 year of intensive  field work by thousands of volunteers and trained  ornithologists, I fear the news following this study will be even gloomier. Back in my teaching life  I was telling a group of students about this decline  and a 16 year old guitar playing youth in my class  named Zak took it upon himself with plans for bird house construction, and a father who was in the construction business. Zak organized the class and  we were able to get some funding and before we knew it  we had over 70 boxes  around the marsh and we bumped up the number of boxes along highway 569 to over 80.

first nesting eastern bluebirds at kerns public  photo by Joanne Goddard

           Zak understood the lesson in ecology about limiting factors.  It has always bewildered me  that   bluebirds and tree swallows have to nest in a cavity but they cannot make the cavity themselves. They have to depend on  finding abandoned woodpecker holes or discovering a cavity perhaps  created by a branch ripping a hole in a tree in a wind storm. Zak, however, knew  that if we could increase the number of cavities by putting up lots of birdhouses we could help out the swallow population. By eliminating the limiting factor in our area  we could help the swallow population rebound.
       I am not sure if Zak has ever taken the time  to do a little marsh math but here  I go. Let's keep it simple   let's say Zak and his classmates put up 100 boxes and lets say 50 percent of the boxes are used. Let's also say the average  clutch is 4 eggs. Zak is responsible for 200 young birds a year. It has almost been ten year since Zak got his classmates to put up those boxes  so he is responsible for over 2000 birds being fledged not to mention how may of their progeny have  gone on to have successful clutches of their own.  The lesson learned here is that cavities are a very good thing!!
     

photo taken by  Bob Fotheringham  at Ruthven Park banding site

  When we first were putting up boxes  my recollection was that we would be upset when a tree swallow took a potential box from a bluebird  but now we have seen the drop in  occupancy rate of our boxes and are delighted to see  a swallow make a home in any box . Occupancy has dropped  from around 75-80% success to closer to 50%. Some of the declines could be  due to the sheer number of boxes we now have up. As I mentioned we originally had very few boxes around the marsh  itself, preferring to establish a "trail" along highway 569. This was done for  pragmatic reasons. It is easy to check on boxes  by driving from box to box and we could not afford the hardware or poles to put the boxes up and took advantage of fence posts. With a little bit of funding we were able to put many of the boxes up on t-bars and  donated pipe around the marsh. Once the boxes went up around the marsh the occupancy rate went down along the highway suggesting perhaps that the best boxes would be closest to where the adults could feed. We have since expanded our swallow box program to include  all of the sewage lagoons, we have boxes in Englehart, Earlton, Newliskeard and in the old and new lagoons in North Cobalt

nest lined with feathers indicates a tree swallow nest

 Another limiting factor for tree swallows is finding feathers to line their nests. We used to see swallows fighting one another  to get feathers to their nests. We have eliminated that by putting out duck feathers donated by hunters so each spring we can spread feathers around the marsh  to help eliminate another limiting factor. Again because feathers are easier to find at the marsh we would expect to see a higher occupancy rate  where it is easiest to find food and feathers.
 

Ron Judd removing a nest

  This was all a very long winded  explanation of why we were out this weekend  cleaning out boxes.  We had 15 volunteers that came out to help us clean the boxes. Two weekends ago Curtis and Clayton  Quinton cleaned all of the boxes at the marsh on snowmobiles which was a marsh first. That left volunteers the boxes on hwy 569 and the sewage lagoons.

happy volunteers

 Every year it is  such a thrill for me emptying the  boxes to see  if they were used and if they were used by a tree swallow or a bluebird and knowing that we are able to do something very simple to help out these populations. If  boxes are not cleaned out the  females will build a nest on top of the previous years and in 3 years the boxes will no longer be usable, so it is essential to clean them out. So thanks to all of the volunteers who came and helped out. I really appreciate  and it would seem that increasingly the  the birds are going to depend on our efforts to provide  cavities  even more . If you would like to help our nest box program please check the marsh website  www.thehilliardtonmarsh.com to see how you can donate  to our nest box program so we can continue to keep up our fight to promote cavities!!! My dentist friend  Rick Caldwell won't like that but then again he helped me put up some of the first boxes in the area. The past president of the Ontario Dental Association  promoting cavities...... only for the love of the birds!!!!


should you wish to build your own box here are some plans

http://media.wix.com/ugd/4589f4_0560559bd4b84e05a4e0b1ff69f72269.pdf

Bird is the word!!!

trying to catch up

The migration arrived with an explosion over the weekend  i am going to let a friends  post catch up on all of the migrants a good friend named Mark Milton who writes a weekly migration report so i will cut and paste that into my blog when it comes out tomorrow but i wanted to chronicle our banding. Life sometimes happen between banding days and i had to help arrange a tow truck for a bander friend  and I had some other stuff to do so here is the bare bones  banding report for the past 2 days  I think you will find the numbers of interest and  these numbers will reveal that the migration indeed has hit  the hilliardton marsh

April 16th

Hoary redpoll 1
slate coloured junco 2
common redpoll 9
American tree sparrow 32



April 17th

Fox sparrow 1
purple finch 1
song sparrow 3
common redpoll 7
junco             13
american tree sparrow  89

sky shark

 On Friday April 15th I had another chance to get out to the marsh and was having a wonderful day banding  and a net check revealed this beautiful bird in the net

This was the first one we had banded this year although we did catch a  shrike originally banded 2 years earlier at kerns public school

banding totals for the day are as follows

red winged blackbird  1

northern shrike 1

purple  finch  1

common grackle 2

slate coloured junco 2  there are no dark eyed junco at the marsh :)

american tree sparrow 3

common redpoll 38

in addition we had 2 red winged blackbird retraps in the net at the same time it turns out they were both originally caught the same day almost a year ago on may 16th  there band numbers are  

1212-20074  and 1212- 20082 my bet is they were caught at the same time a year ago. Have to love retraps !!!

banding our first spring arrivals or saying goodbye to redpolls!!

I had a wonderful morning banding with Delphine and Louis Churman. Delphine is  one of  the Hilliardton  Marsh directors and Louis is a marsh bandit  . What is a bandit you might ask? Marsh bandits will be the topic of another blog. Louis and Delphine are both learning how to take birds out of the nets and are getting really good at it.  As is their bird identification.  I heard a purple  finch calling earlier in the day near the nets and when Delphine told me she had a sparrow in the net I kind of chuckled to myself and sauntered over expecting to tell her that a female purple finch looks a lot like a sparrow but indeed she was taking a song sparrow out of the net.. Delphine had our first migrant that we have caught since catching an earlier returning red winged blackbird March 30th.

Beyond the birds the other great part of the morning was hearing the sound of melting  water and having to take layers off and enjoying  the April sun.

Another perk for the day was seeing the first sandhill cranes and turkey vulture of the season. Delphine  and Louis left just before we managed to catch 2 male purple finch and another 4 red-winged blackbirds. I also managed to recapture our second banded red winged blackbird of the season I was super interested to discover that both of the red winged blackbirds we have managed to recapture  were both originally banded in 2011.  The first we recaptured  march 30th and it was banded  may 25th 2011, and today's was banded  may 4th 2011. The other neat bird to show up was our first pine siskins  at the marsh which may indicate that the birds being reported in the Algonquin park are showing up.

We have had pockets of siskins that have found area feeders  throughout the winter  but these are the first to have discovered the marsh. On a personal note  despite having enjoyed my years of teaching  banding  at the marsh in April is a pretty sweet gig perhaps this will all become standard banding  in a few years but for now out standard banding begins May 2nd which we are all looking forward to.

Hope to have more to write about soon....bird is the word!





Today's banding totals

11 common redpoll
1 hoary redpoll
4 pine siskins
4 red winged blackbirds
2 purple finch
1 song sparrow


retraps

6    black capped chickadee
1    red winged blackbird
25  common redpoll including 4 colour banded birds
2    hairy woodpeckers

noteworthy species not banded  no  census taken due to snow depth

20 Canada geese
5 sandhill cranes   first of year
1 turkey vulture     first of year

Temiskaming shores life guard rescues robins

I love little stories about people taking a little time out of their busy days to save birds. Cheryl Gilbert is the head life guard and runs the aquatics program  at the Temiskaming shores pool and fitness center . On my way into the  pool I noticed over 20 robins in the crab trees  outside and  tried to take a few photo's with my phone . While I was checking in I noticed they were laminating some bird silhouettes . When i asked why they said a robin had hit one of the windows so they wanted to put something up to show them that the windows were there. Problem solved! We had just had a dump of snow and the robins were clearly hungry and had stripped the trees  about an hour later and had flown off. The bird signs had come down and no one  was any the wiser. I think they had heard about the waxwings that had been killed in Ottawa and wanted to make sure the robins would not have shared the same fate. The difference between the two events is there was nothing in the media about the nice lady who saved the birds and there was no carnage and no outrage as one citizen took ta moment  to go beyond her job and help nature. Thanks Cheryl well done. I will think of you next time I hear "Rockin Robin"and no that song was not on the hit parade when I was a kid !!
Bird is the word

Ruthven banding station yellow warbler mystery

This blog is going to be short and sweet sweet sweeter than sweet!!!! For those with a good bird ear they will get the bird joke . Sweet sweeter than sweet is the phonetic  clue reminding birders of the call of the yellow warbler. It has been mentioned to me more than once that if one has to explain the joke it really isn't that funny.  So here  is the deal. When I was down at Ruthven Park banding station Rick ludkin explained to us that in the fall it is almost impossible to catch a yellow warbler. Ruthven has many breeding pairs on their beautiful property but once they leave they do not catch any of the northern breeders and their migrating young ones. Rick prompted me to look at our stats  which I just did moments ago only to discover that we banded  29 in August and another 14 in September. Our last yellow warbler was banded September 25th which is extremely late for a yellow warbler. These birds have to go  south and yet they do not seem to be going  near Ruthven.  A definite curiosity to be pondered and hopefully one day solved . Perhaps that will be studies by a Ruthven "bagger" some  year hence.

           Now last year may have been an anomaly for us as usually yellow warblers are one the first warblers to move, but I checked our spring stats and there were 8  springs that we did not catch as many yellows as we did this fall.  One has to wonder if the bird we caught on the 25th  nested in Cochrane or perhaps even as far north as Mooseonee.  Such are the things  that I like to consider when there is still three feet of snow  and the yellow warblers are still 6 weeks away basking under a tropical sun.Putting on enough fat to make the perilous journey north just in time for black flies and mosquitoes to emerge  to feed their young ones. Allowing them time to fatten up for their journey south and perhaps just perhaps to find their way into a net put up by one of the Ruthven baggers. They will bring the bird into the lab gingerly and Rick will take it out of the bag and smile. Next he will tell everyone about how he saw yellow warblers in Costa Rica this past march in flocks of over 100 as they were getting ready to start their migration. Yellow warblers , sweet,  sweet, sweeter than sweet !!

A new start Ruthven Park" Baggers" to the rescue

Ruthven to the rescue  by Bruce Murphy


Well here I am again starting a blog with all pomp and circumstance requisite with another beginning.  So here we go. The truth is that I never felt anyone was reading my blogs last year so  there did not seem to be any point . This perception came to a halt when I had the opportunity to see the Ruthven Park banding team in action. They have a group of young folk that are integral to the operation of  the banding lab. While I was there I saw "The baggers" as they are called  clear net lanes  do net checks and scribe and band. All this was inspired by a kindred spirit and friend  Rick Ludkin who has inspired a generation of young people  to connect with nature  despite all the distractions  and modern day seductions leading to what Richard Louv has coined "Nature deficit disorder"  Watching all of this happening has inspired me  to resurrect our "bandit program" We attempted years ago to have a program geared to young kids  at the marsh  we tried to run it as a club  but we didn't really have it right.  Currently we attract a lot of young kids who get involved on the periphery but seeing what the folks at Ruthven are doing has truly inspired me.  It is often difficult to uproot an idea  and plant it somewhere else . I feel this is a seed of an idea which if we nurture  and care for it may just take hold  and become something really worthwhile. Readers will no doubt be thinking  I have plenty of manure in me  to help out, and well what can I say it is true. This spring look for a return of the marsh bandits. I have high hopes.

         The baggers  not only inspired me  but also influenced me. This has always been the power of young people when they are at their best. I was always lucky when I taught the TERRA program our outdoor education program at tdss. For the most part I was surrounded by positive  young people who had dreams and visions of what could be . One of the baggers a young man named Ben came up and asked me if I wrote a blog about the birds  we band at the marsh. He even ( the fabulous lad he is) told me he really liked it and suggested I keep in going  because he had not seen anything  in a long time. So there you have it . The blog is not just a cathartic  journal meant to gather dust on a shelf somewhere but it is a living breathing  thing in cyber land being read by young people  who may even like it. If nothing else this blog will help us chronicle the events  unfolding at the marsh and will allow  young and old alike at other banding  facilities a chance to compare their numbers and species  with a northern banding station. It was wonderful to meet some of the faces I had seen on Ricks blog as well. I have to say knowing that someone is actually reading this  has totally changed my view  of the blog and I feel pretty pumped about carrying  on. The timing is perfect as spring is slowly creeping into the north. Temperatures  are forecasted to stay under zero for the rest of the week but I am hoping to get to the marsh to do some banding tomorrow so hopefully I will have another update to make then. In signing off I wanted to thank Rick for the invite to meet the baggers  and to once again be influenced and inspired by a great guy. If Rick was the proverbial pebble thrown into the quiet pool it is clear to me that his ripples  will have touched every shore. For those of you that saw the last slide I used  in my talk to be clear I just wrote ripples not nipples!!!!


Bird is the word!!!!!











The views and opinions  in this blog are those expressed solely by the author  and do not  reflect the views or policies of the Hilliardton Marsh Research and  Education Center