Our year with RPBO has been very rewarding with many unexpected accomplishments for both of us, so many that we never could have imagined any of these before the year of birding began. It really is mind boggling what we have experienced and we are extremely grateful to the volunteers in all capacities, banders (David, Siobhan, Donna, Ann, Jannaca, Rebecca, Ashlea and Katie) and board members of RPBO, they are all such amazing people to work with! We can't thank you enough for all the support you have given us. Thank you all!!
OK, back to birds ....during the middle of September we were very fortunate to experience something that we had heard or read about but had never witnessed before. After several days of rain while covering passerine extraction shifts at both the Rocky Point and Pedder Bay banding stations, overnight when the skies cleared thousands upon thousands of birds arrived with many descending to feed around the banding stations before continuing their migration south to the U.S. This resulted in a very large spike in the number of birds that were banded at both locations and we just happened to be on shift at the same time. This was our first fall-out and it was so cool to experience it.
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| Robyn with lots of birds after a net check at Rocky Point during the fall-out! |
Several rare or uncommon species were seen or banded at both stations but the one bird that was so special and made the news all over North America was a hatch year female Brown Shrike that was caught in a mist net at the Rocky Point location. So what makes the Brown Shrike so special? It is vagrant Asian bird that managed to find it's way to North America and has only been seen once before on the east coast of Canada way back in 1997! As luck would have it, after three days around the banding station the shrike decided to leave during the night before our next passerine shift which meant we didn't get to see it. I guess that means we'll have to go volunteer at a banding station in Asia to see one!
This truly was the rarest of rarities and congratulations to Siobhan Darlington for extracting it and to Head Bander David Bell who banded it.
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| David Bell with the Brown Shrike |
The passerine migration program for 2019 ended this past week and sadly we completed our last shift. A couple of highlights for myself were extracting and banding my 1st Fox Sparrow (my favourite sparrow), a Varied Thrush and a Steller's Jay and for Robyn it was extracting a Cedar Waxwing and extracting and banding a Varied Thrush.
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| Robyn with a male Varied Thrush |
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| Myself with a Steller's Jay |
This year Robyn extracted 512 passerines and banded/recapped 8 while I extracted 379 passerines and banded/recapped 42 which are not shabby numbers for first year passerine volunteers.
Not to be outdone, the RPBO Northern Saw-whet Owl (NSWO) program is currently ongoing until the end of October and both stations have seen some impressive numbers of owls being processed. A big surprise for both of us was that we were asked if we would be interested in training to become relief owl banders to provide coverage in case of illness or vacant shifts and of course we jumped at the opportunity. However, there were a couple of stipulations that need to be filled before this could happen, one of which was to extract and band a Barred Owl (BAOW) which doesn't happen very often. As luck would have it, I extracted and banded a hatch year Barred Owl at Rocky Point on October 11th and Robyn did likewise the following night!!!
So far with just over a week left in the owl program Robyn has extracted 85 and banded/recapped 48 NSWO's plus 1 BAOW and I have extracted 82 and banded/recapped 57 NSWO's plus 1 BAOW. Once again not bad for rookie owl extractors/banders!!
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| My first banded Barred Owl |
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| Robyn's first banded Barred Owl |
Something that really surprised us was that we were asked to join the RPBO Board of Directors and after thinking about what we could contribute to the board we gladly accepted the offer. It was a honor to be considered to be part of the team and we look forward to helping RPBO grow in the coming years.
As the banding seasons are coming to an end we have been able to actually do a little birding away from the stations and the one thing we really noticed was that our observation skills have improved enormously. I have mentioned before that one of the tasks required while working a banding station is to take observations of birds that you see and hear. So on our first couple of birding walks last week we found that our estimating of species was better and we were also hearing many more than in the past simply because we weren't familiar with their chirps,calls and songs.
Of course the latest highlight in our birding adventure has been the Yellow-browed Warbler (YBWA) that was discovered at Panama Flats here in Victoria by birders Geoffrey Newell and Jeff Gaskin on Friday October 18th. The YBWA is a very, very rare Asian old world warbler that has never been seen in Canada before and but for some reason it is here.
So after a night of banding owls I headed out to Panama Flats early on Saturday and was able to not only sight the bird but get a few decent pictures of it. It's amazing that Victoria has now been the location for 2 very rare Asian species within the past three weeks which makes me think how many more could be around the city??
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| The rare Yellow-browed Warbler on October 19th. |
Now that we are back to recreational birding our numbers for the year are starting to climb again. Finding the YBWA was very cool as well as our first sighting of an American Bittern on Sunday afternoon at Swan Lake.
2019 eBird Stats (as of October 21st.)
205 species observed, 71 life birds
Total lifers to date: 219
Now it's time to really work on our winter shorebird sightings around the city and start to learn passerine calls/songs for the 2020 birding/banding season.
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