Teslin Lake update - Sept 15, 2015 - Blackburnian Warbler!

Blackburnian Warbler - the first record for the Yukon

Today it happened, the bird we've always waited for, Ted's favorite bird, a Blackburnian Warbler found our nets on the 11:45am net check!! Hélène was the lucky one to extract it from a net and yours truly was given the honors to put a band on it. It was determined to be a young male, age confirmed by incomplete skull ossification.

This is the first record for the Yukon! It's range extends to the Peace country of BC where it is quite rare a bird around Fort St John - Chetwynd - Dawson Creek as far as I know. That is about 1000km southeast from Teslin. The core range is from Alberta/Saskatchewan east. You can learn more about Blackburnian Warbler from  http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Blackburnian_Warbler/id

Here our star alongside Ted's tattoo of an adult male of the same species, his favorite bird!

For the full suite of photos of our bird please visit https://www.flickr.com/photos/jukka_jantunen/

As you all may know, one has to be careful what one wishes for and likewise be very careful what one promises. It so happened that I went and promised early season that if we were to catch a Blackburnian Warbler I'd jump into the lake - and so I had to. Luckily Ted and Hélène were brave and kind enough to join me.

Ted (L), Jukka (M) & Hélène (R) in the really really ridiculously cold Teslin Lake! Photo actually by Francis Bordeleau-Martin.

Jukka,
the Bander-in-charge