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| 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.
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| Ovenbird! (Rick Hardy) |
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| 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.
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| Northern Pygmy-Owl (David Bell) |
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| 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.
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| The crew on one of our boat trips out of Pedder Bay! |
Week 13 Numbers:
Rocky Point
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Oct 13th
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Oct 14th
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Oct 15th
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Oct 16th
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Oct 17th
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Oct 18th
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Total
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Banded
| 18 | 17 | 22 | 11 | 20 | 31 | 119 | |
Species banded
| 7 | 9 | 9 | 6 | 9 | 10 | 20 | |
Recap
| 8 | 5 | 9 | 9 | 4 | 7 | 42 | |
Species recap
| 4 | 4 | 6 | 6 | 3 | 3 | 10 |
Pedder Bay
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Oct 13th
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Oct 14th
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Oct 15th
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Oct 16th
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Oct 17th
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Oct 18th
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Total
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Banded
| 11 | 12 | 13 | 9 | 10 | 7 | 62 | |
Species banded
| 6 | 8 | 8 | 6 | 8 | 5 | 15 | |
Recap
| 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 11 | 6 | 39 | |
Species recap
| 4 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 8 | 5 | 13 |
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| (click to enlarge) |
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