Week 4: The return of Blair and fun birds!

Tonsend's Warbler - Siobhan Darlington

After missing the first three weeks of he season, while working on a MAPS program in the boreal

forest I (Blair) finally returned to RPBO!! After working in the bug infested forests, it feels even more magical than usual to finally be back working with the birds at both the Pedder bay and Rocky point stations and to get to meet the other banders that I will be working with this season. I like to think that I brought some good luck back with me from the north this week as the numbers picked up a bit and we netted a few firsts of the year and everyone got at least one banding tick this week!

Cassin's Verio

Rocky Point and Pedder Bay respectively broke 600 and 700 birds banded for the year mark this week. A few days of closures due to activity at Rocky point prevented the Rocky point station from catching up to pedder bay despite rocky having higher captures per day, 43 per day vs 29 birds per day. Heavy smoke from the fires in the interior likely caused the birds moving south to build up on the southern tip of Vancouver Island and resulted in the increase in numbers we detected. This increase suggests that big migration numbers are not far off!

Barn Swallow

The highlights for this week started on my first day, Saturday the 11^th, where we captured our first Cassin’s Vireo of the year on the last net round of the day. Unfortunately, I was on my own and could not get the new banders to rocky a new banding tick, which did not help my popularity to start things off. However, it didn’t take long for me to start earning some points with Siobhan at least, as the first day that we banded together she got to band her first ever Western Tanager. He was a nice hatch year male, and also a new species for the year.

Western Tanager

My first day back at the Rocky Point station reminded me just how great it is to get to work at that location. Not only did we captured the second highest totals this year at this site, with 62 new birds banded, but both Dave and I got to band a new bird that we hadn't before! For me I was thrilled to find an adult female Barn Swallow in the ocean side nets, I had never seen a Barn swallow in the hand before, so it was very cool to get a close look at such a special species! Later in the day, Dave too would get to band a new swallow for him, this time a Juvenile Violet-Green!

Siobhan and the Black-throated grey

Black-throated Grey warbler - Siobhan Darlington

Our good fortune continued the next day when Siobhan got two new banding ticks in one round! A round in which we had both a Townsand’s warbler and a black-throated Grey warbler in our nets! I think Siobhan might have been a little bit happy at that point (see photo below).

Overall, both stations had improved weeks with Rocky Point catching 173 birds and Pedder bay netting a total of 206. As usual Rocky has slightly better diversity as it currently stands at 43 species banded in comparison to the 38 species Pedder has had so far.  The most numerous birds this week for Rocky point were Pacific-slope flycatchers (33), Willow Flycatchers (23) and White-crowned sparrows (20). While at Pedder bay the top birds were White-crowned sparrow (33) Wilson’s Warber (25) and Swainson’s thrush (16).

The wolves at rocky point have continued to make their presents known being seen or heard practically every day this week. This includes what appeared to be a half-grown pup, seen by Dave on Thursday.  Having these animals around just adds that much more magic to this incredible location and reminds us what a great privilege we have being able to monitor birds there. In conclusion it sure feels good to be back!

Blair