I heard somewhere that the last part of August is like the Sunday of summer…. As a teacher, I’m mentally flexing my brain to start thinking about heading back, as a gardener I’m madly trying to harvest and can all my veggies and as a birder I’m watching and listening for the signs that birds have already decided summer is over.  A few are still hanging on.  Within the last week the House Wrens by our kitchen window have fledged and I have been seeing the fledged young of Blue Jays and Cardinals (and the odd Brown-headed Cowbird) still following parents around begging for food.

Several birds have started moving for sure, one of which I think I’m seeing: Baltimore Orioles.  There are many nesting in our area and they are frequent visitors to the grape jelly feeder by my feeder net. Since the spring, I have banded over 30 BAORs, all from the one net in my backyard. This may be the most frequently caught bird for my site after American Goldfinches!  I know we have a lot of local BAORs but many visiting the feeder lately have not been banded; 15 of the BAOR’s I’ve banded have been since the beginning of August, 12 of them in the last 3 days, and only 2 recaptures.

As a side note, after talking with Nancy Furber, I have switched to using marmalade.  Marmalade is much more economical, can be bought in larger quantities and is so much easier to find!  Last year I once went to 7 stores trying to find grape jelly.  Nancy found her birds happily ate it and mine don’t seem to have a preference either.  Rick and Marg also mentioned they were watering down the jelly to make it go farther with the side benefit that it is an extra source for water in the hot summers.  I also did this with the jelly and have continued doing it with the marmalade.

With fall migration also comes the possibility of adding new birds for this site.  Four new birds so far this fall have been: American Redstart, Nashville Warbler, Hairy Woodpecker and Cedar Waxwings.  The wild grape crop looks great around my area with one of my nets in front of a particularly good hedgerow full of them, so I’m hoping to get quite a few of this fall. Nancy also came by to see if we could band some of my hummingbirds and we had success!  I’ll count it as a 5^th new species, even though it doesn’t get entered in my data.

Birds Banded Aug 22 – 24th

American Redstart – 1
Traill’s Flycatcher – 1
Nashville Warbler – 1
American Goldfinch – 2
Black-capped Chickadee – 1
Yellow Warbler – 1
Common Yellowthroat – 1
House Finch – 3
Song Sparrow – 3
Cedar Waxwing – 2
Downy Woodpecker – 2
Baltimore Oriole – 12
Common Grackle – 1
Northern Cardinal – 2
Birds Banded – 33

Recaps
Black-capped Chickadee – 5
Baltimore Oriole – 2
Downy Woodpecker – 4

Total Banded 44 (33 new, 11 recaps)

Nashville Warbler

Young Common Yellowthroat

American Redstart

Adult male Ruby-throated Hummingbird

Banding in your own backyard (literally) has some great advantages, but one of the things I seem to be missing is all the baked goods arriving at the other banding sites!

Last week was a great week for my site, lots of birds passing through until Sunday May 15th and then everything kind of stopped until it picked back up a bit this morning.  In conversation with Rick, we’ve been reflecting on the importance of even small patches of hedgerows to migrating birds.  We have rows of cedar hedges lining our property and they shelter a wide variety of birds, including a Canada Warbler that flew into it on Sunday.  Not bad for a backyard bird!  Add to that the Lincoln’s Sparrow in the same net from earlier this week and that’s pretty impressive for a backyard.  My other nets down the road are in pretty open areas, one in front of a hedgerow and the other slipped in between 2 hedgerows.  All three nets have caught an impressive 30 species in 9 days!  With development coming at this area from both Mount Hope and Caledonia, these small spaces become even more important for both migrating and nesting species. The family who own the property I use are looking at building a house in this area next year, but have been so impressed with the diversity of birds in the hedgerows they have decided to leave up the one set of hedgerows in order to hopefully continue providing habitat for the birds.

Net between 2 hedgerows to the right of the blackberry patch.

Net to the left in front of the hedgerows. The box has a Tree Swallow nest and they enjoy sitting sentry on the pole closest to their nest.

In preparation for the Global Big Day, I read a book with my class called, “Is this Panama?”. It tells the story of a hatch year Wilson’s Warbler and his first journey south.  It was a great story, full of information about other birds as well.  At the back of the book it shows a map of the route “Sammy”, the Wilson’s Warbler, took from Alaska. Instead of going straight down the Pacific Coast to Panama, he headed across northern Canada, down through the Great Lakes area and south through the States. We discussed how he had taken the “long way” and students thought he would do better to head back in the spring taking the shorter route.  Well, wouldn’t you know it, but I opened my net the next morning and in one of the nets was a Wilson’s Warbler!  The students were delighted to see photos of him and one even realized “He took the long way back!”

“Sammy” the Wilson’s Warbler.

Banded 93 (May 10th – May 19th)

I open for about 2 hours each morning 5:30am-7:30am) except for Saturdays when I open for the full morning.

2 Canada’s Warbler
1 House Finch
1 Lincoln’s Sparrow
13 Gray Catbirds
11 Baltimore Oriole’s
1 Red-Winged Blackbird
2 Downy Woodpeckers
3 Orchard Orioles
1 Song Sparrow
3 Eastern White-crowned Sparrows
1 White-throated Sparrow
1 Swainson’s Thrush
1 Northern Flicker
1 Tennesse Warbler
21 American Goldfinches
2 Least Flycatchers
8 Common Yellow Throats
1 Wilson’s Warbler
2 Traill’s Flycatcher
4 Yellow Warblers
5 Chipping Sparrows
6 House Wrens
1 Myrtle Warbler
1 Mourning Warbler

And an extracted Ruby-throated Hummingbird (too bad Nancy didn’t live closer!)

Recaps: 22

3 Tree Swallows
3 Song Sparrows
5 American Goldfinches
2 Gray Catbirds
1 Eastern Bluebird
1 Northern Cardinal
3 Black-capped Chickadees
1 Brown-headed Cowbird
1 Yellow Warbler
1 Common Yellow Throat
1 Downy Woodpecker

Tennessee Warbler – I have been hearing them around both properties for a couple of days, so was delighted to finally get one in a net!

Canada Warbler – I had one in my feeder net in the backyard and another down the road at my other nets.

Mourning Warbler – I think this is the first one I’ve ever had in hand! What a surprise to get it in my net, although when I looked up their habitat, they prefer thickets of blackberries and wet woodlands, which is the habitat my net is in. I’ll have to keep an ear out for it singing for the Atlas this summer.

Swainson’s Thrush – Another bird I’ve not had in hand, at least not in recent years and the first thrush, other than robins, I’ve banded this spring.

Lincoln’s Sparrow – Dave and I should be keeping track of the variety of sparrows on our road. Too bad the Clay-Coloured didn’t make it down this way…

Faye

One of the best things about bird banding and getting up in the early morning, are the sunrises.  I wonder if more people knew how beautiful and peaceful these were if they’d make the effort to grab that cup of coffee and just find a spot to sit and enjoy it for the first few minutes of their day!  The bird song in the morning continues to include an wider variety of birds every morning.  The Orioles have returned to my feeder as of Saturday, along with Bobolinks in our back field and as of Tuesday May 3rd, I had the first hummingbird at my feeder around 5pm.

Beautiful sunrise looking back into a field that fills with Red-wing Blackbirds, American Woodcocks, Bobolinks, Willow Flycatchers, and Eastern Meadowlarks, to name just a few.

When I head out in the morning to open my nets, I take my dog, Briggs, along with me and after opening, we continue down the road to hear what other birds are around.  This morning a Brown Thrasher was singing his loud, varied 2-note song from the top of a shrub, with Savannah Sparrows and Meadowlarks as his back-up singers.  It’s a good thing there were lots of bird songs to document as the birds in hand have been the slowest since I’ve started this spring; Sunday being the slowest with only 4 birds (although to be fair, I did have to close around 9 due to rain).  However, there were just enough to wow my young, 7 year old visitor, who has been interested in birds for about a year now.  She’s quite adept at using the Merlin Bird App and has now been introduced to using a field guide and documenting what birds she has seen and where.  The younger generations are so interested in the world around them!  It is clearly evident in my classroom as I continue to share the birds I’m banding at home.

Future bander-in-training, delighted to release the Black-caped Chickadee after she withstood his pecks and pinches!

Today when I shared the picture of the Baltimore Oriole, with my students, they were so quick to pick up on the shape of the beak and how pointed it looked, along with how sharp the claws looked.  They are now keen to find this bird in the small forest beside our school as I’ve seen a few in there in years past.  Yesterday when we were outside for a literacy activity, I could hear a Downy Woodpecker nearby in the woods beside the school.  We stopped, watched for movement and listened to the call.  This morning I had one in my net, so I brought in the picture for them to see what it looked like up close.  One boy, who obviously spends a lot of time with his family watching birds asked, “Is that a Downy Woodpecker or a Hairy Woodpecker?”  Wow!  This lead to conversations about noticing what was different and to their favourite part about birds, listening to their calls.

First Eastern White-crowned Sparrow for my site on May 3rd.

First Baltimore Oriole of the season. He showed up not 2 minutes after I put out my jelly feeder Saturday morning.

Banded Sunday May 1st

1 – Swamp Sparrow
1 – Red-winged Blackbird

Recaps:
1 – Song Sparrow
1 – Black-capped Chickadee

Banded Tuesday May 3rd

1- American Goldfinch
1 – Baltimore Oriole
1 – Brown-headed Cowbird
1 – White-throated Sparrow
3 – Eastern White-crown Sparrows

Recaps:

2 – American Robins
1 – Song Sparrow
1 – Downy Woodpecker

Even the best laid plans sometimes go awry… Friday evening, just as I was about to send out a message to those joining me at Lowville Saturday morning, I took a misstep and went over on my ankle.  Long story short, it’s not broken but it is badly sprained.  There was no way I was going to be able to do the walk into the site at Lowville.  Thankfully Ashleigh was free this morning and was able to head over to set up with the youth so they could get in their banding fix for the weekend.  Well, 5 am came and I could hear the birds singing outside and since I wasn’t falling back asleep, I thought I would try hobbling out to my backyard to open the one net that is just steps outside my backdoor.  It was a pretty slow morning, but nice to sit on my couch with my foot up, watching for birds to go in the net before I went out to extract them.

I had a couple interesting birds.  One of them a very odd looking Chipping Sparrow. There was no rusty cap and the black eye line was very faint.  Again I was able to send photos out to a few people to get their thoughts and everyone agreed it was indeed a Chipping Sparrow, which is too bad because I was hoping for some rare bird!  I have attached the photos below.  I also had a female Red-breasted Nuthatch with a brood patch.  This is great for the breeding atlas.  There’s only been 1 summer since we moved here in 2018 that we haven’t had them around.  I’ve been certain they are nesting, but had not been able to get any evidence of any before today.

Banded:

1 – AMGO
4 – CHSP
1 – White-throated Sparrow
1 – Song Sparrow
1 – Downy Woodpecker

Recaps:

1 – Song Sparrow
2 – Red-breasted Nuthatches

Total: 11 (8 Banded, 3 Recaps)

Chipping Sparrow: Note the lack of rusty cap.

Note faint, black eye line. Overall a very strange looking Chipping Sparrow!