A Big Year
Canada March 2020 to April 2021
The decision to move my ticket forward by 5 weeks, proved to have been a good one. The day after I arrived in Toronto, flights were stopped between South Africa, England and Canada as travel bans took place around the world.
Since Charlotte and I had already been doing the winter raptor season here between December-January earlier, we took up again with our Simcoe County Banding Group on the 17th March to the 6th April and added 10 Snowy Owls, 34 Red-tailed Hawks, 5 Rough-legged Hawks, 16 American Kestrels and 3 Northern Shrikes.
All in all a good winter season with totals of;
Snowy Owl x 58
Red-tailed Hawk x 132
Rough-legged Hawk x 19
American Kestrel x 52
Northern Shrike x 23
It was a nice surprise to find that we could catch Snowy Owls and Roughies into April, although, they would have to wait a while as their breeding grounds in the arctic would still be frozen until May in some regions of the Arctic. We were also seeing birds coming back up from their wintering grounds in the USA stopping over at key Canadian sites on route.
Broad-winged Hawks
Our first visit to the Muskokas, our study site of mixed coniferous broad-leafed woodland, was on the 10th of April, we drove up in snow!! Needless to say we never found any birds! We did see an gorgeous adult Red-shouldered Hawk and a passage Rough-legged Hawk.
The first Broad-wing seen, was one flying over the Severn River on the 17th and later that day we caught our first bird of the season.
Over the next 5 months we made several trips to the region catching 144 birds. It was the first time we had tried for Broadwings in the Fall and discovered that the catching window we had last year from May 1st to 15th was not nearly as good as it was in the Fall. Without breeding activity, birds were feeding up prior to migration and were easier to catch and even managed to catch our first recently fledged juveniles, with 9 caught as well as 4 second year birds. Our best day catch was 14 birds.
We managed to re-sight a number of birds from the previous year including a bird we had banded in 2018, recaptured in 2019 and fitted with a colour band, then sighted in 2020 in the same place!
We also caught a lovely adult Red-shouldered Hawk, the only one we were able to try for. We banded a few American Kestrels which we also colour banded. We found several Broad-wing nests as well as 3 Red-Shouldered Hawks nests and were able to monitor their progress over the summer.
Red-shouldered Hawk, what a bird! |
We also collaborated with Hawk Mountain Sanctuary and their Broad-winged Hawk Project to fit transmitters to three birds, two of which remained to breed in the same area, the 3rd moved some 180 km east to breed north of Kingston Ontario!
The reports of Broad-wing numbers coming through the raptor counting stations in southern Ontario (Holiday Beach) and from the USA, New York (Braddock Bay) were staggering, with 11,400 and 13,000 passing through on some days in September.
Another species we managed to catch plenty of were Barred Owls. Using the squeaker at likely spots, we managed to catch 11 birds, notably all adults which would have bred in March and strange not to have caught any hatch year birds which may possibly have been chased out of the area already.
Fall Migration
Forest Farm site
Our friends Tianna and Mike invited us up to their new property just north of our Broad-wing site near Georgian Bay where she was keen to establish a banding station. The property was a lovely mixture of mature broadleaf / conifer forest and Hawthorn / bramble and wet grassland.
We first tried in August getting 4 mist-nets up and over 2 days caught 61 birds of 22 species despite getting rained off most of the time.
American Redstart x 7
Nashville Warbler x 4
Black and White Warbler x 2
Chestnut-sided Warbler x 2
Wilsons Warbler x 1
Canada Warbler x 2
Common Yellowthroat x 1
Least Flycatcher x 1
Eastern Wood Pee-wee x 1
Black-capped Chickadee x 9
Red-eyed Vireo x 10
Blue-headed Vireo x 1
Ovenbird x 2
Purple Finch x 1
Chipping Sparrow x 1
White-throated Sparrow x 4
Song Sparrow x 4
Swainson’s Thrush x 1
Veery x 1
Grey Catbird x 1
Rose-breasted Grosbeak x 3
Scarlet Tanager x 2
We also caught the 100th Broad-winged Hawk of the season then catching 15 more in the area around the farm including 5 hatch years.
Wilson's Snipe, very much so! |
We did one more mist-netting session in October as the Northern Saw-whet Owl migration got underway. We set 6 nets this time, including a big net out in an opening on the grassland next to a small group of trees to try for Barred and Long-eared Owls.
We caught 50 birds of 12 species.
Wilson’s Snipe x 1
Pine Siskin x 11
Fox Sparrow x 1
American Tree Sparrow x 3
White-crowned Sparrow x 5
Black-capped Chickadee x 5
Ruby-crowned kinglet x 3
Swamp Sparrow x 1
Purple Finch x 1
Downy Woodpecker x 1
N Saw-whet Owl x 16
Barred Owl x 2
We tried for Northern Saw-whets on the 2 nights despite difficult wind conditions and caught 16 birds including a control from Ohio!! The bird had been banded in 2018 as a hatch year. It was so good to be able to catch them here in (relatively) good numbers and to establish the place for further Saw-whet banding in the future.
The big net came into its own at night when we heard Barred Owls calling in the forest who were responding to the Saw-whet calls. So by placing a squeaker under the net and working it to the calling owls, I managed to get two birds!
Northern Saw-whet Owls |
It was also time for big raptor migration and in particular Red-tailed Hawks. We visited out best site for this species, which lived up to its expectations, ringing 64 birds including a few controls of birds from 2 Lake Erie coastal raptor banding stations, one from Holiday Beach, of a bird 18+ years old, as well as birds from Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Many of the Red-tails we were catching were the subspecies ‘abieticola’ a darker northern race which were moving south.
Two years before, we had tried to catch a Great Horned Owl at one particular woodlot with no reaction, so this time at dusk, we decided to try and call it out using a squeaker.
Almost immediately, a bird flew to the edge of the trees and then down onto the trap! It sat there for a few seconds, then back up to the trees. I tried a different call, woodpecker distress call and back in it came, this time getting caught. It was the first time we had caught one and what a huge bird! It was an adult female at 1.8kgs! Now we had a plan to catch these large and aggressive owls and over the next couple of months caught 2 more!
We also did 2 sessions at the ‘Milkhouse’ with Garth Baker for Saw-whet Owls during October and caught 30 birds (one night Garth managed to get 50 birds in one night!). The total for the Fall season was 300 birds banded.
Winter Season
Our first sightings of southbound arctic migrants were seven Rough-Legged Hawks, 4 Northern Harriers and 2 Northern Shrikes on the 2nd of November. We caught our fist Rough-legged Hawk on the 7th November at our Lake Erie site, unusual for there and went on to catch 2 more in the same place that month.
We tried for our first Snowy Owl on the 19th November, an adult male, who came into the trap but didn’t get caught.
Over the winter we found trapping Snowys quite hard, and were often frustrated with many half hearted attempts of birds coming to our trap, as well as many uninterested adults, probably already banded from previous years.
We ended up catching 34 birds, 21 of which were adults, 22 females and 12 males and seeing as many as 35 at one site and none at all at others. A strange year for them. Did they have a bad year, or a good one? Did the juveniles stay up on the breeding grounds following a good Lemming year? Or were we seeing the remnants of a poor breeding season? We cannot say.
On the other hand, Rough-legged Hawks had a record breeding season, with hundreds of birds counted at southward migration sites across N America. We more than doubled our record catching 44 birds! Including 9 Black morphs!
adult female |
Over the winter we caught 104 Red-tailed Hawks and sometime in January stopped targeting theme to concentrate more on Rough-Legged hawks and Snowy Owls, otherwise we could have probably reached 200!
The highlight of our winter was undoubtedly one very cold day out west, what a crazy day!
We caught 4 Snowy Owls, a black morph Rough-legged Hawk and topped it all by catching an adult male Gyrfalcon!
Neither Charlotte or I had ever seen one before! We got the trap down for it and waited. It was some 200m away on a pole, and I was trying to convince myself that it was a Peregrine and not to get too excited, all the while alarm bells going off in the back of my mind, because it was looking like it couldn’t be anything else! Especially when it came off the pole and flew directly towards us, along the track we had backed up on! As it approached the trap, it got bigger and bigger, then suddenly was hovering over the trap, just like a Roughie! Then it suddenly landed sat for a couple of seconds, then ran onto the trap and was caught! Going in, was the longest 200m drive of my life!!
It weighed 1280g, a good size Red-tail weight! Whats more, we achieved the perfect Arctic Trifecta for Raptors today.
We also made 3 outings with Nigel Shaw, to a local supermarket car park in Innisfil to set nets round the ornamental Crab-apple trees for a real Arctic special, Pine Grosbeak! We caught 27 birds plus a Cedar Waxwing!
Pine Grosbeaks |
Another activity we were involved with was training a team of 4 employees from the environmental company, Falcon Environmental. Falcon were the wildlife response team at Toronto Pearson Airport, trapping birds who were in danger of being hit by aircraft and relocating them to safer environments. Our task was to train them to band / ring the birds of prey, in particular the Snowy Owls.
Over the winter, we banded 53 raptors with them of 7 species including 13 Snowy Owls, 33 Red-tailed Hawks, 2 Rough-legged Hawks, 1 Coopers Hawk, 1 American Kestrel, 2 Great Horned Owls and one Short-eared Owl.
On one occasion in late November, we had met at the usual spot where we processed the birds, when I spotted a Long-eared Owl flying around with a few Short-eared Owls. So in December, we had met 3 of the team to process 3 Red-tailed and one Rough-Legged Hawks and whilst this was going on, I set a 40’ net up on a bank next to some scrub and put the squeaker under it. Sure enough, at dusk, a bird showed itself, hunting the bank, I hit the squeaker and the owl went straight into the net right over the squeaker! Whilst we were processing the bird, another 2 birds showed, and again, hitting the squeaker, they went straight into the net! Three Long-eared Owls. There was a 4th, but we couldn’t tempt it.
We ended up banding 304 birds over the winter period.
Snowy Owl x 47
Red-tailed Hawk x 138
Rough-legged Hawk x 45
Gyrfalcon x 1
American Kestrel x 25
Cooper’s Hawk 6
Barred Owl x 8
Great Horned Owl x 5
Long-eared Owl x 7
Short-eared Owl x 2
Northern Shrike x 20
In addition, we banded a Northern Goshawk, Peregrine Falcon and a Broad-winged Hawk at the rehab centre.
Red-tails can be greedy! |
a 'Northern' type 'Abieticola' |
barred Owl |
American Kestrel |
another Nothern 'abieticola' Red-tail |
abieticola Red-tail |
Great Horned Owl, amazing beasts |
Black Roughie |
Gyrfalcon, the largest falcon in the world. |
Great Horned Owl |
It was -28 that day |
Northern Shrike |
Can't get enough of Black Roughies! |
adult male Gyrfalcon |
Great Horned Owl, perspective on size! |
and another Black Roughie! |
Long-eared Owl trio |
Fox Sparrow, big! |
Pine Siskins |
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