It was -20 C first thing this morning, colder with the wind chill. For Canadians these conditions should have been conjuring up scenes of skating on frozen ponds, skiing through spruce woods. But…I heard a lot of…well, I guess bitching would be the best descriptor. But we all know that these are the conditions that separate the Snow Bunting aficionados from all the rest. Snow Bunting banders are a rare breed indeed. Impervious to the cold and cutting wind, they hunker down in heatless vehicles after setting corn-baited traps to entice the little birds so they can be banded and measured and then released. Other than not liking much being handled by giants that they think are going to eat them, the birds don’t mind the conditions at all. And…here is a bonanza of nutritious, super-rich food to help them through the conditions and prepare them eventually for their return to the Arctic.

And so it was with the attitude of the aficionado that Liam and I met up early at the York Airport to see if we could catch any. We knew that, although there was very little snow, the birds would likely storm the piles of corn, whether enmeshed or not. I had been preparing them for this, maintaining “bait piles” for days on end whether there were birds around or not – usually twice a day. Many birds have now learned that there’s a consistent source of food at my site when they need it. When it warms up and the ground is bare they are content to range over the countryside looking for whatever is available. But when times get hard, they know where to go.

Yesterday afternoon I visited the site and found a group of about 30 birds hoovering up the corn. A good sign. I replenished it and left, confident that they would be looking for it today. And so they were!
Liam and I spent a frenetic morning emptying the traps, banding, and then re-emptying the traps again….and again.

We called it off around 12:30. Bird numbers were beginning to decline noticeably and, frankly, my toes were telling me to quit or lose them. But it had been a VERY successful morning: we banded 180 birds: 159 Snow Buntings, 18 Horned Larks, and 3 Lapland Longspurs. Plus we retrapped 17 birds most of which had been banded at the site earlier – some in December and some January. But there was one Snow Bunting that had been banded at Marnie’s Irish Line site on the 17th. And there were 2 more with bands that I didn’t readily recognize and am very interested to get their history.

Many folks are concerned that these conditions are hard for these birds and they’re at risk. Remember, these are birds that are adapted to the rigors of the Arctic. All the birds we handled were in excellent physical shape and carrying at least some fat and, in some cases, a lot of fat. And this after spending a night sleeping out in this cold. Amazing little birds!!

So the next time you walk out the door into frigid cold, don’t complain, take a deep breath and think….Snow Bunting.
Rick

Late yesterday afternoon I checked on my banding site and, while there were no birds to be seen, the corn put down that morning was mostly consumed. So….I replenished the piles in anticipation of this morning’s banding.

I arrived around 7:20, set and baited the traps, and then climbed back into my heated car to wait and watch. (At -17 C. (wind chill >22 C) the heated car was a treat.) At 7:20, it was still fairly dark and, although I could see the traps, I couldn’t make out much detail. I’m always curious about what time birds might (or might not) show up to feed. At around 7:35 I “thought” I saw a movement but couldn’t make anything out. And then, a short way off, some more movement…maybe. I reached for my binoculars and started to scan directly around the traps. Nothing there. But then, just past them, in the clods of exposed dirt I saw a head poke up, and then another…and another. Within a couple of minutes I could see at least a dozen Snow Buntings standing and looking around – all within 10 meters of the traps.

The only plausible explanation is that these birds, after feeding on the freshly replaced corn, had hunkered down in the lee of clods of dirt just a few meters away from the bait site itself to spend the night. Good plan as they could feed almost as soon as they woke up. At least 25 birds, all at once, rose up and approached the trap area and then….took off in a flash, landing 200 m away in the field to the west. I waited…but they didn’t return. A quick look around turned up an American Kestrel sitting on the wires directly behind me. It too was hungry and looking for an easy breakfast. The Snow Buntings weren’t going to provide it.

I had to laugh at the thought that these little birds watched me set the traps and bait them, all within 10 m of me…and I had no idea they were there.
Rick

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