Wednesday, October 24, 2018

Week 13: An OVEN-tful end to the season

Sunrise on our last day at Rocky for 2018 (David Bell)
Our final week of passerine banding gave us beautiful fall weather, with hardly a cloud in the sky all week. This also meant that most migrants passed right over us, giving us a rather low week in terms of numbers, but a few highlights kept things interesting! Owl migration monitoring continues until October 31st, so there's still time to get in one last shift for the year.

Banding highlights

This week we finally got our first (and only) Steller's Jay of the season! A hatch-year bird at Rocky that I was lucky enough to band. Rocky also got its second Anna's Hummingbird of the season (and third ever), along with two more White-throated Sparrows and the majority of our Pine Siskins for the year. The major highlight of the week, however, came on October 15th when Donna banded Rocky's first-ever Ovenbird, the last in a series of eastern rarities for the season.

Ovenbird! (Rick Hardy)
Steller's Jay (David Bell)

At Pedder, the pickings were rather slimmer, with only 62 birds banded for the week. One of those birds was our second Northern Pygmy-Owl of the season! Luckily the three of us who missed the first one were all present and Blair finally got his banding tick for this species. Other highlights at Pedder included our 50th Anna's Hummingbird for the season there, our 4th (!) Swamp Sparrow of the season and an after-hatch-year male "Slate-colored" Junco.

Northern Pygmy-Owl (David Bell)
Slate-colored Junco (David Bell)
Blair with his Northern Pygmy-Owl (Siobhan Darlington)


New Arrivals, Census & Obs

Highlights at Rocky this week included Rough-legged Hawk (14th), Rusty Blackbird (17th) and Yellow-headed Blackbird (18th). Additionally, Rocky had its first Gadwall, Common Goldeneye, Ring-necked Duck, Bufflehead and House Sparrow of the season. The latter is a regular bird at our Pedder Bay site but fairly unusual at Rocky, and it waited until the last day of the season to put in an appearance! Pedder had its first Northern Shrike, Lapland Longspur and Rough-legged Hawk of the season. Notably, the Rough-leg was the same individual seen at Rocky earlier in the morning on the 14th, and is only the second or third record for Pedder.
Wildlife Sightings

While we heard the wolves howling on at least one occasion, they didn't put any more appearances in this year. We did have near-daily sightings of Black Bear and Humpback Whale, however, and on the 13th an insect highlight with our only Monarch butterfly of the year heading south off Rocky Point.
Volunteer Appreciation

We'd like to thank all of our (many) volunteers for all of their help contributing to a great season - we couldn't have done it without you! We hope you had as much fun as we did this year and look forward to seeing everyone out again next year.

The crew on one of our boat trips out of Pedder Bay!

Week 13 Numbers:
Rocky Point
Oct 13th
Oct 14th
Oct 15th
Oct 16th
Oct 17th
Oct 18th

Total
Banded
181722112031
119
Species banded
7996910
20
Recap
859947
42
Species recap
446633
10
Pedder Bay
Oct 13th
Oct 14th
Oct 15th
Oct 16th
Oct 17th
Oct 18th

Total
Banded   
1112139107
62
Species banded
688685
15
Recap
4567116
39
Species recap
445685
13



















(click to enlarge)

Sunday, October 14, 2018

Week 12: They call them Turdus migratorius for a reason!

Red-tailed Hawk - Siobhan Darlington

Week 12 was a beautiful week of fall weather with many lovely birds.

Banding highlights

Swamp Sparrow - David Bell
Despite the season slowing down and drawing to a close, we still managed to have some excitement this week. The week started with Rocky Point catching the first Northern Saw Whet owl of the season during regular banding hours. Saw whets are not a common catch during the day and are always a delight to get to see in the light of day, especially when they stick around after banding like this cute little owl did giving everyone there that day a great look!

Rocky also banded its first Anna’s Hummingbird of the season this week, this was also only the second ever Anna’s banded at the station! This highlights one of the many differences between the Pedder bay and Rocky Point banding stations, where Rocky Point had just the two in its history, Pedder has nearly 50 just this season!

The overall bird numbers are pretty low at this point in the year with most of the sparrows and warblers already gone, however, the kinglets are still on the rise with the overall total finally hitting and surpassing 300 individuals between both Pedder bay and Rocky Point!

White-throated Sparrow - David Bell
Adult Northern Goshawk -  Siobhan Darlington
Despite most of the White-crowned and Golden-crowned sparrows having left, we are still catching some of the less common sparrows, with both Pedder Bay and Rocky Point banding another two swamp sparrows. This was the first of the season for Pedder Bay and both stations got several more White-throated sparrows.


New Arrivals, Census, and Observations:

Northern Saw Whet Owl - David Bell
There was still a lot of migration activity observed this week even if it wasn’t fully reflected in the catch total. This was highlighted on October 6th , the e-bird global big day, with 109 species being observed, including Rocky Point's second record of a Smith’s Longspur! A rare visitor to the coast of British Columbia. Though, sadly, this individual was not cooperative enough to give anyone a photo opportunity.
There were also major movements of robins all week with the peak occurring on Wednesday when we estimated 1800 individuals flying over the station at Rocky Point and out over the strait! Rocky Point also saw its first Palm Warbler of the season on the 12th October, hopefully, it finds its way into the nets this week! Raptors also continued to put on a good show over Rocky Point with Golden Eagles and a stunning adult Northern Goshawk making appearances. As well,  one day  nearly 50 Red-tailed Hawks were circling with the 200 or so remaining Turkey Vultures that have not yet headed south.


Wildlife Sightings

The wolves continued to be heard this week with their howls echoing across the meadows several mornings.  Both Humpback whales and Orcas continued to frequent the waters off of Rocky Point.







Week 12 numbers

Rocky Point
06-oct
07-oct
08-oct
09-oct
10-oct
11-oct
12-oct
Total
Banded
31
27
29
37
60
35
29
248
Species banded
13
9
6
11
14
9
11
30
Recap
3
5
15
7
7
9
6
52
Species Recap
3
4
7
6
5
6
5
12
Pedder Bay
06-oct
07-oct
08-oct
09-oct
10-oct
11-oct
12-oct
Total
Banded
24
28
8
14
34
56
26
190
Species banded
14
14
7
8
9
15
10
24
Recap
4
9
6
7
9
10
12
57
Species Recap
4
7
4
4
6
7
6
15


Friday, October 5, 2018

Week 11 : More "surprise" to come ...

Kim, Daniel & Ann at the Hawkwatch on saturday
This week has started by a "scandalous" hawkwatch on saturday at East Sooke Park 😎Lot of people were at the "rendezvous" but the hawks were a bit shy. No big kettle of Turkey Vultures as we used to see them at Rocky Point the previous week...

For banding, on average/day we had 36 new bands at RP and 27 new bands at PB with slow days on Monday and Tuesday. The best day was on Thurday with 59 new at RP and 56 at PB. We didn't catch any Steller's Jay or Varied Thrush yet :-( Sio, Dave and I are waiting for them, hopefully we'll get them before the end of the season... only two more weeks ! 

SWSP (Blair Dubeck)
I was told that the highlight of this week was a Swamp Sparrow (SWSP) banded a Rocky Point this rainy friday ! Personnaly I went (again) on the "dark side" of banding to meet the adorable Saw-whet Owls 😍
We've reached a total of 5 000 individuals banded between both stations... The species winner of the week in both station is decisively Ruby Crowned Kinglet with 71 banded at RP and 30 at PB. We have also banded a fair amount of Oregon Junco (16 at RP and 28 at PB), Spotted Towhee (34 at RP and 7 at PB), Hermit Thrush (12 at RP and 34), Yellow-rumped Warbler (26 at RP and 12 at PB), Golden Crowned Kinglet (16 at RP and 6 at PB) and Pacific Wren (11 at RP and 3 at PB). Regarding the Yellow-rumped Warbler, it was a mix of "Myrtle" and "Audubon" with sometime some hybrids containing characteristics of both subspecies.

This time of year, trees are full of kinglets, we are seeing a tons of band tailed pigeons and a lot of robin flying over both stations. We've also seen and heard the beautiful call of Sandhill Cranes flying in V-shape over Rocky Point, as White-fronted geese, Cackling geese and Snow geese as well. 

Blair trying to make a new feather friend - Snow Gosse at Rocky Point on Tuesday 2nd

Our volunteer Kiara & Chris Sukha
If you came out in the field recently, you've probably met Chris Sukha who were visiting RPBO this year again between his way from Mackenzie Bird Observatory, BC to Ontario. We were glad to host such a knowledge bander helping us both with the passerine migration and with owls ! Thank you for your help Chris.





Ivy banding a NSWO
I would like to thanks Ivy Doak as well. A really nice volunteer coming for a few years and helping both with passerine and owl. I was glad to see her on her last shift wednesday night ! Hope to see you again next year ;-)

And the last but not least, our wonderful board people with a special mention for Ann Scarfe who is always trying to make everyone's life easier. She's doing an incredible work with the schedule and filling the gap coming out in the field a lot of time ! Thanks so much :-)

That's it for this week. I'm really grateful to work here in such a nice team and to meet all of you, folks 🙏 See you soon 😊 Donna



Ann Scarfe coming back at the station with a few birds

Rocky Point
29-sept
30-sept
01-oct
02-oct
03-oct
04-oct
05-oct
Total
Banded
50
30
25
15
47
59
29
255
Species banded
17
15
9
8
17
13
12
30
Recap
10
7
4
2
2
5
1
31
Species Recap
7
3
3
2
2
4
1
12
Pedder Bay
29-sept
30-sept
01-oct
02-oct
03-oct
04-oct
05-oct
Total
Banded
24
28
8
14
34
56
26
190
Species banded
14
14
7
8
9
15
10
24
Recap
4
9
6
7
9
10
12
57
Species Recap
4
7
4
4
6
7
6
15