Rocky Point Bird Observatory: Week 11: Full Skies

We had another excellent week here at Rocky Point Bird Observatory, despite some rather inclement weather in the last couple days. It is now officially late fall (by migration standards) as our nets are now dominated by Ruby-crowned Kinglets and a variety of Sparrows with hardly a Warbler or Flycatcher to be found. The skies are full of Robins and Red-tailed Hawks are increasingly common among the kettles of Vultures. Band-tailed Pigeons and Cedar Waxwings are becoming much less frequent with only double digits recorded this week, compared to the many hundreds of a couple weeks ago.

Processing the Flicker Integrade by Fallon Nagy

The week started off well at both stations with Pedder banding 68 birds last Thursday and Rocky banding 36 in just 1hr 20mins of operations (our last day of military closures for the season!), as well as recapping a Barred Owl originally banded during the owl banding session of Sept. 20!

Avery with Recap Barred Owl by Beth Christopher

Speaking of Owls, the owling this week was hampered significantly by the poor weather with Rocky banding 27 Northern Saw-whet Owls and Pedder just 9! The night of Oct. 2 was the one exception as Rocky banded 8 that night. Hopefully the coming week will see more clear nights and better conditions as the owl migration picks up.

Back to our day time monitoring, the nets this week were dominated by Ruby-crowned Kinglets at both sites with Oregon Junco also being abundant at Pedder Bay (a season high of 19 Juncos were banded on Oct. 3^rd). The Kinglet numbers were actually down a bit from last week though that may be a reflection more of the poor conditions than an actual waning of their migration. On the not-so-common side of things Rocky banded 2 more White-throated Sparrows to bring the season total up to 5. This “eastern boreal” species has been increasing in northern BC over the past few decades as it spilt over the northern Rockies and moved west with a subsection of the population now seeming to prefer to migrate south through BC instead of following their ancestral migratory route back across the Rockies and east of the Prairies.

Flicker Intergrade by Fallon Nagy

Also in our nets was the second Swamp Sparrow of the season, banded at Rocky on Sept. 30. The same day we banded the first Flicker Intergrade of the season (Red-shafted x Yellow-shafted) at Pedder. The majority of the Flickers here are Red-shafted but every now and again one with Yellow-shafted genes can be found. This particular bird had only red in the flight feathers (typical of Red-shafted) but had features of both races on the head (a mostly red moustache typical of the Red-shafted, partial red crescent on nape and brownish face – characteristics of Yellow-shafted).

A late Warbling Vireo was banded on Oct. 3 and 3 Hutton’s Vireos were also banded over the week at Rocky, doubling our season total for the latter species!

It was a good week for raptors, excluding the past couple damp days, With Turkey Vultures (2591 at Rocky, 472 at Pedder) and Red-tailed (52 at Rocky, 69 at Pedder) and Sharp-shinned Hawks (55 at Rocky, 18 at Pedder) all peaking this week. Sept. 29^th was the best day for raptors at Pedder with 181 Turkey Vultures tallied along with 36 Red-tails, 2 Broad-winged Hawks and a Peregrine Falcon. The following day was exceptional at Rocky with a season high 1050 Vultures recorded! The full stats for raptors that day are in the following table:

Species	Total
Turkey Vulture	1050
Osprey	2
Bald Eagle	4
Northern Harrier	2
Sharp-shinned Hawk	21
Cooper's Hawk	3
Broad-winged Hawk	3
Red-tailed Hawk	32
American Kestrel	1
Peregrine Falcon	2
Total Raptors	1120

Offshore at Rocky, numbers of Surf Scoters are increasing rapidly with 356 detections for the week, 112 of those on Oct. 4, along with a smattering of their White-winged cousins. Mew Gull numbers are climbing as well and there are still plenty of Heerman’s Gulls around with a season high of 255 of the latter tallied Sept. 30. The first Bonaparte’s Gulls are finally arriving as well with a high of 8 seen Oct. 3. A Heerman’s Gull even found its way into the bay at Pedder to be recorded on census on Sept. 30. A surprise on the 5^th was a Parasitic Jaeger that was spotted flying over the station by one of our volunteers. This is the second Jaeger, following the Long-tailed seen a few weeks back, that we have had coming over land, curious behaviour for a normally pelagic group of birds.

American Robins have increased in a big way with the big flocks moving overhead that typify this time of year not failing to disappoint. Both station saw big numbers with 864 recorded at Rocky and 567 at Pedder over the course of the week. Also in the skies in the latter half of the week were Lapland Longspurs! We recorded singles on the 3^rd and 4^th and 2 on the 5^th. Always a treat to hear their little rattle and soft “teww” calls.