The Snow Bunting(/Horned Lark) banding season has gotten off to an unusually early start. Looking back over my records I note that we have caught very few buntings in December and never this early. In 2010 we caught 10 on December 21st; 2013 we had 7 caught over two days – December 26th & 27th; 2016 we had 114 starting December 14th. So getting 13 yesterday was unusual. and then I got another 33 today!
It’s not as unusual to get Horned Larks in December, but so far we’ve banded 31 – a very good start as well. And this morning I also caught one of the two Lapland Longspurs that was hanging around with a small flock of buntings.
It wasn’t a particularly cold night (went down to -3 C.) and there was no new snow to add to the 2 centimeters already on the ground. So I wasn’t expecting much this morning. But they fooled me. It was a little like Grand Central Station with small groups of Snow Buntings or Horned Larks or both dropping in, grabbing a snack and then heading off again. Only to be replaced by another flock. I wondered if these were the same flocks simply cycling through but….I don’t think so. Some groups of buntings contained all females; another had a number of young (HY) males; another brought a couple of longspurs. It’s more difficult to judge what was happening with the larks, especially as the two sexes look so much alike at a distance. But even then, I would get a small group (<8), followed by a large one (>35), and sometimes mixed groups of larks and buntings. I ended up banding 58 birds (33 buntings, 24 larks, 1 longspur) but I would estimate that these represented well less than 25% of the birds that dropped in to the trap area.
I wanted to try an experiment as Dick Stauffer, a Snow Bunting colleague in Alberta, has asked a number of times about what would be the best bait for buntings. I have always used cut/cracked corn. But today I thought I would put it to the test. In one of the traps (the top one in the photo above) I baited with an ordinary millet-based bird seed. There was a definite preference for the cut corn. Only 3 birds (5%) were attracted to the typical bird seed mix. Dick has had a frustratingly hard time out West luring birds to his traps. Maybe they don’t like cut corn….
Rick
When trapping the snow buntings on their spring migration here in the Yukon in March/April we have been using cracked corn also as well as red millet. The buntings like both seed. Happy banding. Julie
Hi Julie. This is the second time I’ve experimented with a different bait and “our” birds definitely choose cracked corn over the other.