That's been our life and passion for the past couple of months but it has been an amazing experience that has exceeded our expectations. Only a few months ago we started volunteering with the Rocky Point Bird Observatory MAPS and Passerine Migration programs and now we are extracting birds from the mist nets, processing recaptures and banding new birds. It really has been a fast paced learning curve that we both have thoroughly enjoyed.
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| Rocky Point's first Black-throated Grey Warbler of the season that I extracted. This is also RPBO's logo bird! |
During this time bird watching has changed a bit for us because not only are we extracting the birds but we also perform banding station observations (OBS) which in turn has resulted in a number of lifers for us. OBS simply is keeping your eyes and ears open for birds around the station and entering them into the database as well as our own eBird profiles. Our most notable species of 2019 also happened to be a rare species which Head Bander David Bell and I observed - a pair of American Golden-Plovers flying directly over us at the Rocky Point Bird Observatory restricted access DND location. These two birds were our 200th species of the year and our 214th lifer!!
Like most things in life, when learning new skills the more that you repeat a process in a short period of time the learning curve becomes very steep. Such has been the case with our volunteering at RPBO. During the past few months we have a combined total of over 510 hours volunteering-to-date with RPBO and during this time we have extracted over 700 birds and are now classified as passerine extractors.
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| Robyn holding a Wilson's Warbler that she extracted. |
The past couple of weeks we have also been given the opportunity to band passerines and my first was a Yellow Warbler and Robyn's was a White-crowned Sparrow but I really wanted to extract my favourite passerine, the Fox Sparrow which I extracted and banded on September 2nd.
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| Here is the first Fox Sparrow that I extracted and I also got to band it! |
We currently are camping at the Pedder Bay RV Park for the week covering a number of passerine shifts and the start of the much anticipated Northern Saw-whet Owl (NSWO) season. Sunday night we weren't disappointed with 5 owls processed and both Robyn and I got to band our first owls!!
Last year Robyn received her owl extraction classification and this year my focus has been to also become an owl extractor. We are off to a great start after 4 nights of banding with a combined total of 18 extractions and 12 banded owls.
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| Myself banding a NSWO for the first time. |
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| Robyn's banding her first NSWO |
We'll have lots more to report after our week on site but here is our 2019 stat update.
2019 eBird Stats (as of September 20th.)
202 species observed, 68 life birds
Total lifers to date: 216
YES!!! 202 species observed and we still have just over 3 months left in 2019 so it will be interesting to see how many more we can discover.
Until next time ..... Happy Birding!!!
