McGILL BIRD OBSERVATORY

WINTER POPULATION MONITORING

Week 14:  January 30-February 5, 2006

Welcome to the McGill Bird Observatory weekly report.  Click here for a complete listing of our archives.  Comments or questions are welcome at mbo@migrationresearch.org

PICTURE OF THE WEEK:



A mugshot of the first Black-capped Chickadee banded at MBO (Sept 19, 2004), and
recaptured and photographed this week.  The width and raggedness of the black bib
may be indicative of age and/or sex; we have begun looking at this more closely with the
intent of field-testing measures on individuals such as this with a known age and sex.

(Photo by Marcel Gahbauer)
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Special thanks to Wildlifers in Baie D'Urfe for donating the seed to stock the feeders for MBO's Winter Monitoring Program - click here for information about the store.

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THIS WEEK

THIS WINTER

2006 TOTAL

SITE TOTAL

# birds (and species) banded

4 (3)

259 (15)

86 (12)

5139 (92)

# birds (and species) repeat

10 (2)

160 (6)

62 (5)

955 (41)

# birds (and species) return

3 (3)

18 (4)

12 (4)

90 (15)

# species observed

17

47

28

170

# net hours

11.0

119.5

53.0

6475.1

# birds banded / 100 net hours

36.4

216.7

162.3

79.3

Note: table does not include nocturnal banding (owls)

Bander-in-charge:  Marcel Gahbauer
Assistants:  Shawn Craik, Gay Gruner, Juliana Lisi, Greg Rand, Limoilou-Amélie Renaud

Notes:   It was a rather uneventful week for winter by any standards, and seemed particularly quiet in comparison to last week.  A single morning of banding produced just 4 new birds, by far the lowest total for any day this winter.  Even recaptures were relatively few.  Many others in the region have been reporting that activity at feeders has been greatly reduced over the past week during the unseasonably mild weather, and it may be that our observations simply mirror this more widespread pattern.

Fortunately, the slower pace gave as un opportunity to look at the Black-capped Chickadees in considerable detail.  At present, their sex can be determined only during the breeding season, and ageing criteria are less obvious than in many other passerines.  However, various hypotheses have been presented suggesting that wing chord, tail length, bib size and shape, and mouth lining (among other features) may individually or in combination be reliable indicators of age and/or sex.  We will be studying museum specimens in addition to the birds captured at MBO in an attempt to determine whether any of these measures can be used effectively.

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