We awoke to a calm morning with the smell of autumn in the brisk 5°C air. The reprieve from rain had us hopeful that the clement weather might bring in more birds and allow us to get back up to our daily banding average of 30 birds. There was some good bird activity when we arrived at the station with large mixed flocks of Yellow-rumped Warblers, Ruby-crowned Kinglets and some sparrow species mixed in. Both Lincoln’s and Song Sparrows were visible in abundance which had us confident that today would be an improvement on that past few days. We captured our first bird, a hatch-year Swainson’s Thrush upon net opening and a further three on the subsequent net round. This trend continued until the 9:10 net round when we pulled nine new birds out of our nets. I arrived back from census just in time to depart on the 9:40 net round where we caught an additional 5 birds one of which was our first Sharp-shinned Hawk of the season in one of our standard songbird nets! This is our third of the season overall, the other two of which were caught in each of our hawk nets that are situated along the Homathko.
Twenty-one of our 28 birds that we banded today were caught before 10am. This is the trend that we tend to expect as bird activity peaks roughly an hour and a half after sunrise which is when we conduct our daily census. Sparrows ruled the day with Song on top at 10 banded and Lincoln’s taking second with four. Common Yellowthroats and Swainson’s, our bread and butter species earlier on in the season had a little push with three each. The final tally of 28 birds banded of 10 species with 2 recaptures was a much welcomed increase in our banding totals after several days in the early September doldrums.
As our banding total would suggest sparrows made up most of our diversity and the bulk of our numbers today. We detected 9 of the 14 sparrow species that has been recorded at the station as well as adding a 15th! The newest addition to the station’s list was an American Tree Sparrow that I encountered while scanning through the ever present mixed flock of sparrows that forages along the road side east of the south field.
American Tree Sparrows breed in areas of stunted thickets of willow, alder, spruce or birch where the northern treeline meets the arctic tundra. As such they tend to be later migrants, arriving in their wintering grounds of northern and central North America from October onwards. We were fortunate enough that this bird began its migration early as this species doesn’t tend to arrive in the valley until after we have left in October. While at Long Point Bird Observatory last fall I had both the pleasure and privilege to handle and band one of these classy birds. In response to the cold temperatures in both their breeding and wintering grounds these sparrows have very soft and downy body feathers. More information along with some better quality photos of this species can be found at: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/American_Tree_Sparrow/overview
On census I both heard and saw not one but FOUR White-throated Sparrows with a fifth coming later on at the station. Cold temperatures brought another small push of White-crowned Sparrows down from their higher elevation breeding habitats. A lone Golden-crowned Sparrow added some more variety to the numerous Song and Lincoln’s Sparrows along the road once again clinching the Zonotrichia trifecta. Yellow-rumped Warbler and Ruby-crowned Kinglet numbers increased with 135 and 54 individuals spotted respectively. Our daily estimated total recovered from the past few days coming in at 58 species identified on the day.
Link to today’s eBird checklist: https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S59696394
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Species | Band | Recap |
Song Sparrow | 10 | 2 |
Lincoln’s Sparrow | 4 | |
Swainson’s Thrush | 3 | |
Common Yellowthroat | 3 | |
Yellow Warbler | 2 | |
Savannah Sparrow | 2 | |
Sharp-shinned Hawk | 1 | |
Ruby-crowned Kinglet | 1 | |
MacGillivray’s Warbler | 1 | |
Oregon Junco | 1 |
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Birds Banded | 28 |
Species Banded | 10 |
Birds Recapped | 2 |
Species Recapped | 1 |
Species on Census | 37 |
Species Recorded | 58 |
SEASON TOTAL BANDED | 1097 |
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