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Our elder senior bander, RG, birding on top of the Pedder Bay hill (Samuelle SP). |
It's hard to believe that three weeks of fall migration banding have FLOWN by already! As a new member to the RPBO community, I am having a blast working with the many amazing volunteers and my awesome coworkers. I'd like to thank all the volunteers for their hard work every day - you all make our jobs as banders so much more fun and interesting every day! We have also had the joy of hosting more visitors this week! One of the best parts of our jobs is teaching volunteers and visitors about the amazing work we do, and we love the enthusiasm and curiosity from inquisitive minds that drop by! If you are interested in visiting our Pedder Bay station, you can sign up as a visitor on our Eventbrite site, here!
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| Our intern Liam showing his little brother how to hold a bird (Emma RL). |
If you're an avid birder or bird bander, you will be well acquainted with the "August doldrums." If you aren't familiar with this term, basically August is often quite slow and quiet for the birds in the nets and around the station. Birds are not singing as actively as they were even two weeks ago, but the slower banding days offers us an opportunity to further appreciate what DOES make its way into our nets and our surrounding habitat.
Despite the lower numbers of birds this week, there is never a dull moment at the Rocky Point Bird Observatory. With a few spare minutes hours here and there, the banders, interns, and volunteers have been keeping themselves busy busy busy fixing nets, building new stairs (at Pedder Bay - thank you Mark Byrne!), decorating the banding board, and teaching new volunteers.
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| The interns added some art to the Rocky Point banding board. I will leave it up to you to figure out which were done by Liam and which by Rebecca RL (Samuelle SP). |
So what were our highlight birds this week??!? The August doldrums could not stop biodiversity this week, that's for sure! We had some pretty darn sweet and spicy treats, offering views like no other of birds many people DREAM about. Week three ended with a BANG with a Cassin's Vireo at Rocky Point. This being the follow up act to the epic double trouble day on Monday when not only a Western Wood-Peewee was caught at Rocky Point, but a Pileated Woodpecker was caught only minutes later at Pedder Bay! We don't often catch these three species, and getting the opportunity to see them up close is a real privilege and a great fortune!
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| A stunning Cassin's Vireo. A creature of ENVY (David Bell). |
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| A GORGEOUS Western Wood-Peewee looking REGAL (David Bell). |
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A lively Pileated Woodpecker showing off his underwing and somewhat crazy eyes (Samuelle SP).
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This week also offered us lots of blackberries, some rain on Saturday, fallen trees blocking the road into Rocky Point on Sunday, and amphibians!! As usual, many deer hanging out around the stations - friendly banding friends... as long as they stay away from our nets! There are always lots of things going on to keep us on our toes out here!
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| A Rough-skinned Newt at Rocky Point (Samuelle SP). |
Check out our daily and season totals below! While Rocky Point continues to lead for total number of birds banded, Pedder is squeaking in with a better species diversity for new birds banded. Stay tuned for next week's update! Any guesses for what the next fun surprise in the nets will be??
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