Idle March

Things have slowed to a crawl to explain my bird banding as of late. March started off good with 5 Boreal Owls banded in 2 nights.

Adult Boreal Owl



March also brought my 3rd Gyrfalcon of the winter, a very plump adult female Gyr. My first ever adult captured.

There seems to be the odd Great Gray Owl and Northern Hawkowl still floating around, here is a Hawkowl I banded by Manning.

We finally deployed our last satellite transmitter a couple of weeks ago on a 4 year old Snowy Owl I caught by Whitelaw hence he is named Whitelaw. He sat on a large transmission line for about a week then decided to move SE across both the Peace River and Smokey River to an area that I've banded lots of Snowies in the past, I'm still very much amazed how these birds head to areas where I've been before.

Here he is with Raptor biologist Mike Russell without transmitter.

Satellite transmitter attached

Map showing current location.

Today I went south by Girouxville to try for some Snowies, I only came across an adult female Snowy I banded back in Feb, but as I continued South I watched this Northern Goshawk at the grain terminal sitting waiting for pigeons to arrive. I'm glad I found him before any pigeons arrived.

Tracking Snowy Owls in Northern Alberta

Transmitters arrived and last weekend I was able to trap a suitable Snowy Owl to meet up with raptor biologist Mike Russell and our friend Syl to put the transmitter on that was shipped from Norway to Saskatchewan then to Peace River. I caught this adult male south of Fairview and we met each other to place the satellite transmitter.

It didn't take very long to put the transmitter on, Mike Russell has been placing transmitters on Barred Owls, Great Gray Owls and now Snowy Owls, after about half an hour it was secured to our Snowy which we named "Mike" after ourselves.

Syl Bourdages was very helpful in the process so I would really like to thank him for taking photos and lending a hand when needed!

Releasing Snowy "Mike"

Here is "Mike" as I found him 2 days before the first transmission from his receiver. Notice the antenna sticking out from his back.

And here is his first week of movements, he moved around a bit.

Thanks Dan for the maps and sending the transmitters.
Stay tuned for more updates as he tracks north back to the arctic this spring.

New Year and New Birds

It has been quite sometime since my last post,

First new bird of 2013 was this beautiful Great Gray Owl, it has been a long time since i've banded one.

I'm looking for a site to start baiting Snow Buntings and I got lucky when I my neighbor told me about a grain pile across the field. There were close to 500-600 snow buntings feeding there so I setup my bownet and caught some.

                                          Adult male Snow Bunting

There seems to be no Northern Hawkowls around this winter, I have only seen 2 on my travels and caught both in the new year.

Adult Snowy Owls have finally arrived, they are hungry this year so far and very easy to catch. I took a drive south to Falher where I caught most of my Snowy Owls last season, there was an owl perched on a transformer pole just at dusk so I setup for it and caught it. This is my first ever retrap of a Snowy Owl banded in a previous year. Here is how much she changed color.

                                               Female Snowy 2012 molt

Retrapped Snowy Owl 2013

Went out this past weekend and caught a couple more Snowy Owls and this juvenile male Gyrfalcon, this has been a remarkable winter, I've never seen so many Gyrfalcons.

Gyrfalcon

If your looking for more frequent updates just go to Facebook and like Peace Region Raptor Study.

 

Winter Woes

Snowy Owls began arriving since my last post, at the start of their arrival I was having difficulties catching them and I'm not sure if it was in part to minimal snow cover. To date I'm at 22 banded and 24 caught. I found two emaciated Snowies that later died. With the amount of snow we have around Peace Region it's no wonder why these owls are starving. I've only caught two older birds and the other 20 have been HY (hatch year) birds.

Regular boreal dwelling owls are scarce this winter, I thought after having such a great winter catching hawk owls last winter that maybe this was the "NORM" in Peace Region, I guessed wrong! I've only caught 3 Hawkowls and a single Great Gray. This is my first Great Gray a month shy of two years since my last.

After a month with my Swedish Goshawk Trap up and running finally the first bird of the season, a SY (second year) male Northern Goshawk.

Recent Birds

Things are picking up around Peace Region. I went out on Friday and came across 2 adult Gyrfalcons. I wasn't able to trap them because they both had full crops but when I went back on Saturday I was setting up for a Snowy Owl and this juvy Gyr came in and I managed to catch it with my bownet.

Snowy Owls have arrived again this year in decent numbers and now they seem to be hungry. I've caught 7 so far and they are all juvy birds. Looks like they had another decent breeding year in the arctic.

Hungry Hawks

Winter arrived 2 weeks early along with Snowy Owls. The first Snowy I found was on Oct.28th and all I can say is that they aren't reacting to my bait like they did last year. I've tried for 12 different Snowies and haven't had any interest.


With the first winter dump of snow a week and a half ago I was very lucky in catching 7 Rough-legged Hawks and 2 Harlan's Hawks. Here are some photos showing the difference in plumage in Roughies. These birds were in terrible shape being very much underweight, I had 3 RLHA's and 1 HRLH on my trap at once. I managed to catch 2 of the 4.

SY Harlan's Hawk



SY Harlan's Hawk



Harlan's Hawk Tail

AHY Male Rough-legged Hawk



SY Rough-legged Hawk







ASY Male Rough-legged Hawk



HY Rough-legged Hawk





Hawk Fight



Roughie Tail





Fall is in the air

A few photos from the weekend, I finally found the ultimate spot for counting and trapping migrating raptors. It is where the Heart River Valley meets the Peace River Valley and on Saturday I counted 74 Raptors heading south.

Here's Peace Region Raptor Stations first Rough-legged Hawk of the fall.

I had an adult Bald Eagle come check out my bait and the best was a juvy Golden Eagle make 2 passes but noticed me and flew away.

This juvy Harrier came in at the same time as another Roughie. I managed to catch the harrier.

Boreal Owls are still coming through so I'm still catching them, saw-whets have almost dried up.

Mike Blom