The “official” start of the 2017 Fall migration monitoring season at Ruthven started today. Twenty-three years ago, I initiated banding here as a “pilot” – just to get a sense of the possibilities. The “lab” consisted of a folding stool under a tree next to the Butterfly Meadow (it was just a field then) and a fishing tackle box filled with bands, pliers, wing rulers and weighing tubes. I ran just 5 nets. Based on the catching I did then it seemed like a good place to band consistently….and the rest is history.

It was a quiet, almost lonely, activity back then – NO VISITORS at all. This continued for a few years. But slowly word leaked out and little by little interested birders began to show up to take a look and then, for many, to take part. Now it’s a rarity to band by oneself; in fact, I can’t remember the last time I was here by myself.

This morning was a busy time….socially: A group of (Young) Baggers arrived around 7 after having walked through the night from West Hamilton (a distance of 42 km.) – this has become a semi-annual tradition for them to kick off the banding season – the Camino de San Enrico. Fortunately they were bushed and went right to sleep in the Buttery and weren’t underfoot. Because we had a group of (Old) Baggers arrive to set up their nets on the river flats. They now have 7 nets on the go which will augment the overall number of birds caught at Ruthven, give them a chance to develop banding skills, but won’t impact our standardized banding setup. And then we had two new banding hopefuls arrive – one in her mid-twenties and the other in her early teens – both keen to take part and learn. As well, we had a couple of (Young) Baggers who didn’t make the trek helping out. Whew! And don’t let me forget the 11 visitors that dropped by to check things out. Sometimes I think yearningly about “the good old days”……

So all this people stuff was taking part in the midst of a slow birding day; probably a good thing. This surprised me as I thought the cold night temperatures and light N wind would have produced a push of migrants but this wasn’t the case. But the show is on the road.
Banded 16:
1 Eastern Wood Pewee
3 House Wrens
2 Red-eyed Vireos (the horde that Bruce Murphy in New Liskeard is banding obviously hasn’t made it here yet)
1 Chestnut-sided Warbler
1 Magnolia Warbler
1 Western Palm Warbler
5 Common Yellowthroats
1 Song Sparrow
1 Bobolink

ET’s: 49 spp.

Photos:

End Of Summer Results:
We actually set up and began banding on August 20th – we wanted to see if we were missing much by not banding in the second half of August. (We haven’t tried to do this before as personpower has been an issue…up to now.) I would judge our results to be “unremarkable”: we banded 286 birds of 49 species (an average of 26 per day). The Top Three were: Bobolink (57), Song Sparrow (30), and Common Yellowthroat (28). Warblers were the species we were most interested in as we thought that maybe we had been missing them by not starting early. We banded 65 (22.7% of the overall catch) of 15 species…..so I’m not sure we’ve been missing much. The most significant finding was that there’s a “flow” of Bobolinks going by at this time and we were able to tap into them.

Magic Moment at Fern Hill Oakville:
Katherine Paveley and I set up nets at the Oakville campus of Fern Hill School yesterday in readiness for the coming season. Surprisingly we found a late nesting of Barn Swallows – either a 2nd nesting or a late one (after an unsuccessful attempt). The 3 nestlings were just getting ready to take their first flight. They crowded the rim of the nest looking hopeful. At regular intervals the two parent birds would fly by to urge their kids to give it a try. Finally, one took its first flight, landing nearby on the roof. We watched as the second climbed out of the nest and onto the support pipe. Shortly after that we saw it take flight – looking strong but needing to work on its landing (on the roof). We didn’t see the third take off but at the end of the afternoon the nest was empty – they’re on their way!!!

Rick