It was with great excitement and anticipation that I packed
my bags, put my posters for my presentation in the car and pointed the bow
south to attend the 2nd international bird observatory conference in
Cape May New Jersey. It was going to be a chance to mingle with birders from
across the globe and to learn more about what is happening around the world and
to connect with and learn from banders. I had lot of time to anticipate what was about
to happen as I was travelling 18 hours in a rental not wanting to trust my
ageing corolla to the gathering of banders.
Despite all of my musings about how great the conference was going to be
nothing prepared for how wonderful the conference was and how much I was going
to learn in the upcoming week.
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| banders touring the sea watch station |
It turns out there
were 98 banders from as far away as South Korea and Israel quite a gathering
from Europe and Scandinavia and Iceland, Mexico and Costa Rica and a great
collection of banders from the U.S. and
Canada. It was a great opportunity to put faces to names that I had frequently
exchanged information about sawwhet owls. It was wonderful to connect with Canadian
banders as well and I met banders from Tadoussac Quebec where we have long been
inspired by their boreal owl banding and we even re trapped a siskin banded
there. On the West coast I met Anne Nightingale who is the inspiration for the
Rocky point bird observatory where they banded 1400 sawwhets this past season.
Also in attendance was Stephan Menu from Bruce Peninsula Bird Observatory ,
Stu Mackenzie from Long Point Bird Observatory and Patricia Campsall from Lesser Slave lake bird Observatory and Ricky Dunn who has been a great inspiration in the Canadian Migration Monitoring network.
One of the things
I was not prepared for was the absolute parade of jaw dropping inspirational
work that banders are doing around the world and the emphasis so may have on
providing quality educational opportunities to get the public interested in
birds. Another takeaway from the conference was the need to publish as much
information as we can to convey information to other researchers and the public to understand more about what is
happening to birds worldwide and at a local level. I had always
thought we would be waiting for graduate students to do the writing from our
data but we have been urged as banders to get the word out so more people have
a sense of what we are seeing with the hope of informing conservation
decisions. The adage of Partners in Flight “to keep common birds common” may
well depend on bird observatories doing a better job getting their information
out to scientists and the public.
Needless to say I am making plans to attend the 3rd international bird observatory
conference I cannot say
enough about it and as always it was hard to say goodbye to new friends but I
was keen to return home with so many new ideas.
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| tree swallows in flight |
In addition to
all of the talks on a mosaic of different topics we had the chance to do some
fun bird watching at Cape May which is a migratory hotspot and a place I have always
wanted to visit and the cape did not disappoint. While touring one of the hawk
watch stations I had the chance with
others to take in a movement of over 10,000 tree swallows flying overhead at one
time an experience that I tried to video but feel I really captured deep . It is something I had never experienced
before and really drove home the point especially as we know how much trouble
they are in the North. Keeping common birds common!!!
Sometimes dragging myself out of bed into the cold of 4 am to get to net
lanes in time I periodically question why do we band birds? People ask me this very question all of the time. After seeing
that swarm of tree swallows and thinking of what the future holds and the role
bird observatories have around the world. I will never have trouble answering
that question ever again.
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| black backed gull soaring over Atlantic common on the beach rare in the north !! |
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