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| Joanne with a long eared she just banded |
Choices
The sliver of
moon soars high in the sky, a crude mimic of the noonday sun.
Ribbons of cloud stretch across the horizon, dancing shades of deep blue and
creamy grey supporting the canopy of stars above. Meanwhile the call of the Northern Saw-whet
Owl echoes from the Fox Pro, mingling with
the baying of a lone dog in the distance. A perfect night for owls.
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| boreal owl we are not the droids you are looking for |
Even though it’s only
10 pm I’m heading to bed. I’ll miss most of the owls, in fact I’ve missed over
80% of them already. I’ve had a chance to band Boreal Owls and Long eared due to them hitting the nets early, but the bulk of them pass me by. I
occasionally see them fly above us while we set up the nets. Beautiful Long- eared dancing in the pale pastel twilight as the stars wink into existence above
them. I am enthralled by them and wish I could stay a little longer. But a
history of insomnia calls me to sleep and I can’t function without a sleep
schedule anymore.
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| white crowned sparrows adult left immature right |
It’s a trade off. I
can’t do both owls and songbirds, so I’ve chosen songbirds and sleep. The drive
home from the marsh is lonely, my headlights illuminating a pale and empty
stretch of road. I wonder what birds we will get in the morning, hoping for a
busy day.
But it is not as busy
as we hoped. Dawn cuts through the fog laden sky, melting the frost from the
nets with the chirps of sparrows bursting from the understory. It’s been a
slower day that usual, the great wave of sparrows has never materialized it
seems with the amount of juveniles surprisingly low. Chris explains that the White-Crowned Sparrows
may have had a hard breeding season. Near the end of May there was still snow
on their breeding grounds. Too cold and too wet.
So they chose not to
breed, or not to try again. They had to make a choice, to risk breeding and
lower their survival chances as they poured energy into their brood, or
sacrifice a chance at offspring to survive another day. It seems like many
abandoned parenthood altogether, or were unable to raise their chicks at all.
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The ducks seem to have
suffered a similar fate, I think it was the rain which washed their nests away
like so many other birds. As the airboat crew searched in vain for ducks in the
vast emptiness of the marsh I was reminded of the fragility of everything. How
a simple wet and cold spring determined the outcome for the remainder of the
year, maybe even the next.
And yet despite these
falling numbers of some species due to the cold and wet other species have
thrived. Red-eyed vireos surged this year with the caterpillar moth
infestation. We’ve set many new records for the marsh, Robins, Ruby-crowned Kinglets,
White-throated Sparrows, Blue-headed Vireos, Swainson’s
Thrushes, and many more. Over 11,000 birds caught so far. I wonder what allowed
these birds to flourish while others struggled. What trade-offs did they have
to make, or avoid altogether?
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| first american tree sparrow of the year |
As I walk along the
berm watching the empty nets waver in the breeze I think of all the trade-offs
I’ve made. I wonder which ones were worth it.
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| joanne with a rusty blackbird definitely worth it !!! |
