McGILL BIRD OBSERVATORY

WINTER POPULATION MONITORING

Week 12:  January 16-22, 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:


Rain some days, a winter wonderland on others - weather this week was highly variable.
The nicest day was Sunday, when sunny skies lit up the fresh snow clinging to the
branches of shrubs and small trees.  The photo above, taken along the C nets, also
illustrates the remarkably high water level in the ponds.
(Photo by Marcel Gahbauer)-

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

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204 (13)

31 (8)

5084 (92)

# birds (and species) repeat

--

120 (6)

22 (4)

915 (41)

# birds (and species) return

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11 (3)

5 (3)

83 (15)

# species observed

14

47

27

170

# net hours

--

82.5

16.0

6438.1

# birds banded / 100 net hours

--

247.3

193.8

78.9

Note: table does not include nocturnal banding (owls)

Bander-in-charge:  Marcel Gahbauer
Assistants:  Shawn Craik

Notes:   There was no banding this week, due to a variety of inclement weather.  However, over the course of three visits to check on the activity at the feeders, 14 species were observed, including our first Northern Shrike observation of 2006.  Just as interesting was seeing a new species take advantage of the feeders - see the photo below.

While there was little of note at the site this week, we received interesting news of a different sort from the Bird Banding Office in Ottawa early in the week.  The foreign-banded American Goldfinch we captured in November 2005 has been identified ... and it is from Laval!  It was banded at Boisé Papineau in early October 2005 as part of a small-scale banding program that has been operating for more than a decade.  This is the only other active banding project in the greater Montreal area (aside from some species-specific research), and as such it should not be surprising to have some exchange of individuals with MBO, but this is so far the only such case.


Crows are not normally considered feeder birds, but on Sunday three of them were on
the ground below the platform feeder and around the nearby mixed seed feeder, that
suspiciously had been knocked to the ground.  The crow in the photo above flew to the
top of one of the adjacent conifers to watch while the feeders were replenished.
(Photo by Marcel Gahbauer)

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