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| Morning of Oct 11, just before the swan exodus begun |
Well, it has been almost three weeks since the last
update – a lot has happened since then. Winter came and went a couple of times
and more snow and cold is in the forecast for the coming days. The banding
season came to an end as well and most of the birds departed for their warmer
winter homes. Our long serving volunteer Abril Heredia who was with us since
early August departed for home and warmer climate on October 11th.
She reports that some species she was banding here earlier are already chirping
away in the Botanical Garden of Mexico City! Thank you Abril!
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| Young Northern Shrike - more scary in hand than any hawk! |
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| Dusky Flycatcher on Sept 30 - seeing is believing |
The official banding season ended September 23rd
but as always we continued banding hoping to catch the southbound Juncos and American Tree Sparrows. We waited and waited and finally when the
snow and Snow Buntings started
flying we had to accept the fact that those very common species, together with
American Robins, had somehow eluded us. We did, of course, get some Juncos and
Tree Sparrows but most of the catch was Common
Redpolls and Chickadees. It is
always amazing to see Wilson’s Warblers
linger into October up here. Some of the other banding highlights included two
more Sharp-shinned Hawks, the
season’s only banded Northern Shrike
on the 29th and Mountain
Chickadee on the 5th, two very late Empids, a Dusky Flycatcher on the 30th
and a Hammond’s Flycatcher on the 4th,
and finally the rarest of them all, a hatch-year female Nashville Warbler, the territory’s 3rd and the
observatory’s 2nd, on October 1st! Overall, in spite of
the record number of Alder Flycatchers, the banding season was by far the
slowest of the observatory’s short history.
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| NASHVILLE!! |
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| The season only Mochie |
Since the official banding season was over our main focus
was on the visual migration counts. Unfortunately most of the days were pretty
dead but luckily there were a few good ones there too. On September 30th
we tallied 493 Snow Geese for a new
observatory record alongside over 200 Canada
Geese and Tundra Swans. Also on
the move were a few raptors including the season 2nd Gyrfalcon. October 1st we
finally had what we had been waiting for, northwest winds, but we got too much
of the good stuff – the gale force winds lifted the raptors way way high up and
they moved past us with great speed so that we probably missed most of them but
we did tally 400+ Tundra Swans, 18 Golden Eagles and 22 Northern Harriers among others. A Hooded Merganser was seen on the 3rd,
1000+ Redpolls was tallied on the 4th,
the season 1st Black-backed
Woodpecker was seen on the 5th and late Sandhill Crane and the season 1st Snow Buntings were seen on the 10th.
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| Hooded Merganser with Common Mergansers |
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| Osprey |
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| Mew Gull having a bath |
The swan migration that we had been waiting for started
on the 11th. That day almost 5000 swans, mostly Tundras
were counted. Other highlights for the day were the observatory’s first ever Cackling Goose, a Northern Hawk Owl and so far the season highest count 27 Golden Eagles. The next day another
nearly a thousand swans were seen together with 2600 Redpolls and 57 Pine
Grosbeaks. On the 14th the swans were moving again but this time
both species and mostly in mixed flocks which made the day very challenging. Of
the almost 4000 swans 1200 were identified as Trumpeter Swans and 2300 as Tundra
Swans and the rest were left unidentified. The number of Trumpeter Swans is
by far the highest ever recorded at the observatory and more like the spring
numbers on Marsh Lake. Other birds of note that day included 2 American Kestrels well behind the
others of their species, 37 Rough-legged
Hawks and yet another minima-type Cackling
Goose. On the 15th another over a thousand swans were counted
and now we are just waiting to see if that was it or if there will still be
something to write in the last blog entry of the season...
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| Tundra Swans high up in the sky... |
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| ...and low right above the lake surface |
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| Juvenile Trumpeter Swans passing the point... |
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| ...and a family above the "Aces" |
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| Our president Jim Hawkings visited the observatory |
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| Rude-boy on his first observatory visit |
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| Teddles, Willie and Jukks |
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| Abril when it was still nice and sunny (Oct 8) |
Here is the final banding list for the 2012 season (the
number banded after Sept 25th in the
brackets):
Sharp-shinned Hawk – 13 (2)
Merlin – 1
Solitary Sandpiper – 3
Belted Kingfisher – 6
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker – 1
Western Wood-Pewee – 3
Yellow-bellied Flycatcher –9
Pacific-slope Flycatcher – 1
Alder Flycatcher – 827
Least Flycatcher – 3
Hammond’s Flycatcher – 7 (1)
Dusky Flycatcher – 3 (1)
Northern Shrike – 1 (1)
Warbling Vireo – 15
Black-capped Chickadee – 65 (16)
Mountain Chickadee – 1 (1)
Boreal Chickadee – 142 (20)
Red-breasted Nuthatch – 12
Golden-crowned Kinglet – 3
Ruby-crowned Kinglet – 134 (11)
Townsend’s Solitaire – 1
Gray-cheeked Thrush – 4
Swainson’s Thrush – 41
Hermit Thrush – 3
Varied Thrush – 2
Tennessee Warbler – 1
Orange-crowned Warbler – 88 (1)
Nashville Warbler – 1 (1)
Yellow Warbler – 225
Magnolia Warbler – 1
Yellow-rumped Warbler – 195 (3)
Townsend’s Warbler – 6
Blackpoll Warbler – 87
Cape May Warbler – 1
American Redstart – 21
Northern Waterthrush – 47
MacGillivray’s Warbler – 1
Common Yellowthroat – 45
Wilson’s Warbler – 134 (17)
American Tree Sparrow – 17 (7)
Chipping Sparrow – 17
Savannah Sparrow – 25 (1)
Fox Sparrow – 6
Lincoln’s Sparrow – 9 (1)
White-crowned Sparrow – 22
Dark-eyed Junco – 116 (8)
Rusty Blackbird – 9 (1)
Purple Finch – 2
White-winged Crossbill – 2
Common Redpoll – 47 (41)
Pine Siskin – 3
= 2429 birds - 49 species
