It’s amazing how two Snow Bunting banding sites, that are close together (Marnie’s site is 13.5 km due south), can produce such different results. My York Airport site sits beside a large, empty, cropped field but next to a busy rural road (RR 9). Marnie’s site, which is on a farm on Irish Line south of Cayuga, also abuts a large, empty, cropped field. But…and this is probably the important difference…it sits well back from a little used rural road so traffic and its accompanying noise and vehicle movement isn’t an issue.

I’ve been working hard to squeeze the birds we’ve banded out of the airport site. It has required daily baiting in the morning and late afternoon and actually began with the enticement of Horned Larks early in the process – first week of December – as feeding birds will attract other birds that also want to feed – in this case, Snow Buntings. When “Snow Bunting conditions” (cold and snow) pervaded we were seeing mixed flocks of larks and buntings (with an occasional longspur). Usually flocks of buntings numbered in the tens, sometimes 80-100, but rarely. Sometimes larks would outnumber the buntings, especially later in the morning or after a kestrel’s foray.

Marnie didn’t start seeing Snow Buntings until about a week ago when we got both cold and snow. But her numbers were much higher – 100’s rather than 10’s. Now, sadly, Marnie has to work in her pursuit of the filthy lucre and, so, isn’t able to tap into this banding bonanza with any intensity. As my bird numbers were waning at the airport I decided to give her a hand this morning. She wasn’t kidding when she said she was seeing 100’s; at one point a flock went by that had to number over 350 birds. It wasn’t unusual to get 100-150 dropping into the immediate trap area – and when they did, they made short work of finding their way into the cut corn inside. On one pass we removed over 36 birds from the 4 traps. By the end of the banding session around 11:30, we’d banded 128 Snow Buntings (almost half of my Airport total starting from back in December). And we only stopped banding because blowing snow was filling the traps, blocking the entrances and covering the corn.

Similar appearing sites but very different results. One of the most interesting differences was the ratio of females to males. At the airport site I’ve been catching buntings in a ratio of 3.5 females to 1 male. At Marnie’s site this morning the mix was just 1.3 females to 1 male. Usually males are found well to the north of wintering females so I’m not sure why there is this difference, especially as the site is 13 km south of the airport.

Another notable difference is that Marnie’s site didn’t have a single Horned Lark, not one! At the airport site we get almost as many larks as buntings. Horned Larks don’t seem to be as rattled by passing traffic as Snow Buntings. Interesting. Another difference between the sites is that the airport’s surrounding fields have been worked up a little and there are clods of exposed dirt which seem to attract the larks much more so than the buntings.

Of note is that we recaptured two buntings this morning that had been recently banded at my airport site: an AHY female on January 12th and an ASY female on January 13th. These birds had been part of smaller flocks but now were travelling with much larger ones.

Most of the Snow Buntings I’ve banded in the area that have been recovered or spotted have been along the St. Lawrence River/southern Labrador or even the west coast of Greenland. One of Marnie’s birds, banded this past February, was recovered in Iqaluit on Baffin Island. It would be interesting to know the route that this bird followed to get there!

So….superficially different sites but quite different results.
Rick

Banding is a waiting game that requires patience. As I’ve railed on ad nauseum, to catch Snow Buntings in this area you need two things: cold temperatures and snow. While many had been extolling the mild Winter we’ve been experiencing, I was hoping for cold….and some snow. Finally, we got both starting on the 11th – a few centimeters of fresh snow through the night of the 10th and temperatures dropping to -7 C. I headed out to my site at the York Airport with high expectations. Now, this isn’t what I would call a prime site. True, it sits on the edge of an extensive open cropped field with no nearby shrubbery/trees that might conceal avian predators and it sports a flat gravel pad good for parking and setting traps. But, it’s right next to a road (RR 9) which is fairly busy first thing in the morning as people head off to work or school kids to buildings of higher learning.

Still, I’ve worked hard over the past few years to entice birds to come. I’ve done this by baiting with cut corn daily, starting in early December, with a view to luring Horned Larks which, in turn, will lure passing Snow Buntings searching for a place to eat in this desert of industrially farmed fields. The strategy has worked well. I haven’t got prodigious numbers of birds but I have caught consistently (and without having to travel very far from home).

The “flow” started the morning of the 11th. I set traps at 7:35, 20 minutes before sunrise/light (as the sun would be obscured by cloud cover). There were no birds at the site but ten minutes later a group of 30 larks flew in to take a look and were joined quickly by another group of 15. They were very skittish: dropping in, flying up and circling, and then dropping in again. Once they felt the site was reasonably safe – and that big black thing was just a rock rather than a car with a spellbound human inside – they approached the traps and very quickly made their way inside. By 8:30 there were as many as 80 Horned Larks in the immediate trap vicinity and there were a very few Snow buntings mixed in with them. The birds would feed quickly and then fly out into the open field before moving in again. The only deterrent was the noise of large vehicles – trucks, school buses, heavily-tired pick-ups – that would “spook” them; they’d fly up, circle and settle again. (But this disturbance would interfere with their finding a way into the traps.

By 11:00 things had slowed considerably even though a flock of about 150 Snow Buntings was seen in the distance by the airport – but they weren’t moving our way. At the end of the day we’d banded 39 Horned Larks and 4 Snow Buntings…so some buntings had been paying attention!

The 12th demonstrated that buntings are early risers. On setting the traps at 7:10 I noticed that ALL the corn I had set out when refurbishing the bait piles yesterday afternoon were consumed. Although it was still quite dark I picked out movement: 11 Snow Buntings somehow materialized at the traps. Where had they come from? I scanned the field and started to pick out Snow Bunting heads emerging from behind snow-covered clods of earth. The birds had spent the night huddled down in the lee of these small mounds of dirt. By 7:25 a flock of 35-40 buntings arrived and were quickly joined by 15 more. By 7:30 there were at least 80 scrambling around the traps. They were very skittish: settling, flying up, settling again. But a number found their way into the food. I banded 43 at the first pass and was gearing up for more when an American Kestrel descended on the traps, scattering the buntings – which did not return for the rest of the morning.

The banding on the 13th occurred in two time slots. I set the traps early (7:15) and saw the same behaviour as yesterday – small groups of buntings flying in from the open field so that by 7:40 there were 80-100 in the immediate trap area. But there was a problem: we were getting a light snow fall but the strong gusting winds were blowing it across the fields. Wire mesh traps act like snow fences and the snow was filling the entrance tunnels and piling up inside them, inhibiting entry and covering the bait. So, after banding 15 Snow Buntings and a Lapland Longspur, I pulled the traps and went home.

The snow stopped mid-morning so I went back at 11:00 to take a look. Conditions were ideal as the wind had rearranged as much snow as it needed to. There were 100+ Snow Buntings at the site. I set the traps, topped the bait piles in each one and for the next 3 hours enjoyed the bonanza: I banded another 76 buntings and 3 Horned Larks.

Kestrels can sure put a damper on Snow Bunting banding. On the the 14th I again got an early start and by 7:30 buntings were at the site. Over the next hour and a half I banded 27 Snow Buntings and 17 Horned Larks; I also handled 22 birds that had been banded earlier – most within the last couple of days and a few from December. But at 9:00 the American Kestrel dropped in and the buntings peeled out of there and didn’t return. Horned Larks showed up – they don’t seem to be as concerned about kestrels as the buntings; wary but not overly concerned. The numbers of buntings seemed to be dropping. At the same time, Marnie at her farm site on Irish Line, was reporting a buildup of buntings with flocks upwards of 200 birds. She has a good site: big open fields but with emerging weed heads and no traffic to concern the birds.

This morning (15th) the wave was drawing down: traps were set early; a group of 15 very skittish snow Buntings flew in, circled numerous times (I think this is their way of taking a good look around for predators) before settling…briefly…and then taking off. I managed to catch 6 buntings and a Lapland Longspur before the male kestrel swooped in and scattered them – and they didn’t return. Around 8:30 a group of 50+ Horned Larks dropped in and I caught 4 of them. They didn’t seem overly concerned about the kestrel which was sitting a short way away on the phone wire – but they fed around the traps, not venturing into them – a good precaution as they could get a fast getaway if needed. While I was looking at diminished numbers, Marnie was reporting a flock of 300+. Maybe it’s time to shift operations there for a bit….the birds seemed to have shifter south.
Rick

Man it was cold last night! Down to -20 C. – good old Canadian Weather, eh? No wonder there was a flock of 40 birds sitting at the bait site first thing this morning waiting for breakfast. Interestingly, almost all of them were Snow Buntings – after seeing just 5 or 6 yesterday and banding just one. I had the traps laid out by 7:50 and, literally within 2 minutes, I had 22 birds in them, the majority being Snow Buntings. These were very hungry birds! These birds have no problem with cold temperatures….as long as they can find food.

By the time I had finished banding them, the traps were full again. But this time the mix was much different: just 3 Snow Buntings and 20 Horned Larks. I’m not sure what happened to the buntings but I couldn’t see any around; they must have moved on. Time for the Horned Larks to take over. Shortly after I had cleared these out of the way, there were more birds in the traps, but the pace had slackened. No wonder: our local American Kestrel breezed in looking for his breakfast too. I used him as an excuse to pack up and go = of course it had nothing to do with the fact that it was -18 C. and I was freezing my ass off. Still, it was a very good morning: banded 30 Horned Larks and 22 Snow Buntings.
Rick

Did you feel the cosmic shudder at 4:21 AM? It was the sun getting ready to rise earlier and earlier, making the days longer and the nights shorter. The Winter Solstice…my very favourite day of the year. The marking of the sun’s return bringing light and warmth, waking a frozen earth, and inducing birds to take on their monumental migrations.

A small group of us celebrated this momentous event at the York Airport with a flighty group of Horned Larks and Snow Buntings. Forty to fifty of the former and about 10 of the latter at any one time. The lingering question: when a group flies in to the bait area, are they the same birds simply returning after a short fly-around? Or are they “new” birds coming in for their first feed of the day? The outcome? A resounding “well maybe some of them are new and some, I think, are just returnees”. An incisive answer for sure.

We could certainly use more snow – 2-3 cm won’t last long despite the -10 C. temperatures. But it was enough this morning to allow us to capture and band 25 Horned Larks and a solo Snow Bunting.

Rick