Totals and final thoughts

Sharlene and I made it safely back to Nanaimo at about 9:30 PM last night. The weather was great and our water taxi ride from Calvert Island to Port Hardy took only 3 hours. I was home in Duncan by 10:30, I’m already missing the unlimited coffee I didn’t have to brew myself (I also found out their coffee is a special roast called ‘science fuel’ and it’s specifically for Hakai?!) So I’ll have to find a way to get back there if I want to have more.

During our stay we banded a total of 126 birds of 18 species, and caught 35 recaptures over 10 days of banding. The majority of our recaptures were birds banded last year. Our most abundant species was the Orange-crowned Warbler, which makes sense and is what Eric, Kim and Elsie found last year. We heard many on Calvert Island everyday and they could be easily spotted everywhere on the edge of forests and in the bog.

Orange-crowned Warbler.

Our second highest captured species was the Yellow Warbler, with 52% of those captures occurring on one day (May 12)! No Yellow Warblers were caught before that date. Going from 8 birds one day to 48 birds the next was definitely the most exciting part of this trip. It’s really neat to see that wall of migration happen first hand. This was also interesting because most of the birds caught that day were older male birds. This may suggest that these birds are more familiar with the fastest way to travel North. Many of the other captured birds that day were Wilson’s Warblers, and the majority of them were also older males.

Visualization of daily banding totals over 10 days of banding.

We also got a couple ‘firsts’ for banded birds on Calvert Island, including a Warbling Vireo which was not seen at all there last year. Jeremiah from the 100 Islands bird crew said that he had also never heard or seen any in that area, so it was a pretty cool catch! We also caught Calvert Island’s first Golden-crowned Sparrows, and a Pine Siskin which both have been spotted in the area, but never caught.

Species	Banded	Recaptures	Total
OCWA	46	13	59
YEWA	27	1	28
WIWA	18		18
GCSP	7	1	8
HETH	5		5
TOWA	4		4
AMRO	3	3	6
PAWR	3	3	6
FOSP	2	4	6
ORJU	2		2
PSFL	2		2
BEKI	1		1
CBCH	1	1	2
PISI	1		1
SOSP	1	9	10
STJA	1		1
SWTH	1		1
WAVI	1		1
Total	126	35	161

No Catbird or Mockingbird 😉 but this was definitely still a very interesting trip!

We also caught many Rufous Hummingbirds during our stay. This also isn’t surprising; we saw them displaying and chasing each other around nearly everywhere on the island! Though we do not band hummingbirds, we did mark the ones we caught in our nets with a dot of ink on their undertail coverts so that we could do a mark-recapture estimate of the population of Rufous Hummingbirds in the area. Of the 45 hummingbirds we marked, only 3 of them were caught again. Using a mark-recapture calculation, this estimates a population of 339, a lot of hummingbirds for a small area! Maybe we’ll have to send someone back to Calvert Island with a permit to band hummingbirds …

Male Rufous Hummingbird

Female Rufous Hummingbird

Male Rufous hummingbird

So cute!

I forgot to post a picture from the kayaking adventure we had one night after dinner! I think I was too excited about the Yellow Warblers. Yet another nice thing about staying at this field station is you can sign out kayaks or canoes for a night to explore the various channels near the dock. Sharlene and I paddled to Wolf Beach with Andy and Sarah from the starfish crew – really pretty and we saw some Red-throated Loons up close, too 🙂

A huge thank-you from Kim, Sharlene and I to Christina, Eric and everyone at the Calvert Island Field Station for all of the hard work and attention to detail it takes to keep an amazing place like this running! Our stay has been incredible and it was really interesting to keep hearing about the huge diversity of research questions being investigated here and on the surrounding islands. I hope to be involved in other projects here in the future. Also a big thanks of course to Eric Demers for giving us this opportunity!

Sarah and Sharlene in the bog, closing up nets on our last day.

One last bog panorama.

-Sarah

Last day of banding

Sharlene and I got to sleep in this morning (until 6:30) since we’re finished with banding now. We might’ve tried to band a little this morning but decided against it since there was a chance of rain. Our our last day was very slow, with 5 birds caught and only 1 recapture. We also caught and marked 8 Rufous Hummingbirds (more on that later..).

It was so slow Sharlene and I decided to stalk some birds and try to get some good photos before we had to leave. I called in a banded Fox Sparrow and Sharlene got some good pictures of him, and a few nice photos of three Brown-headed Cowbirds and a European Starling that have been hanging around the solar panels and compost.

Banded Fox Sparrow.

Brown-headed Cowbirds, the lighter one is a female.

Male Brown-Headed Cowbird. And no band! Photo by Sharlene James.

European Starling.

Six birds and no visitors! It was a pretty slow morning. The Coastal Guardian Watchmen just arrived to the island last night, too bad we will miss out on some great presentations, and possibly showing them banding! It’s the first big group of visitors we’ve seen up here.

In the afternoon yesterday we packed up all of our nets and got everything organized to leave. This morning we had our last amazing breakfast 😥 and will spend the next couple hours packing our bags and maybe doing some last-minute exploring.

Packing up nets in our ever-present bug hats.

I’ll post our final numbers later on today once we’re done travelling back to Nanaimo (or possibly tomorrow morning depending on what time that is!)

Our totals will be really interesting to have a closer look at, since we only really had that one day with a big influx of birds that quickly seemed to leave the area.

A huge garter snake hanging out near one of our nets! (Thanks Tim for the ID help!) We hadn’t ever seen such a big garter snake, this one was almost a metre long and an inch in diameter. 

 

I extracted this guy out of a net in our very last round – no birds!

 

Moult limits and Yellow Warblers

It’s our second to last day of banding and we caught 15 birds today (10 new, 5 recaptures). Seems like the group of Yellow Warblers has moved on already! One of our recaps today was one of those first Yellow Warblers, and he was already carrying fat, so I think it’s likely they’ve all moved on, or at least to a different part of the island.

We did catch a couple new YEWAs today, here are some photos of two of them, for those of you interested in aging birds. They both had heavy red streaking on the breast, indicating males. We age birds by looking for a difference between their fresh replaced feathers, and their older retained feathers. At this time of year, there will be more of a difference between new replaced feathers and retained feathers if the bird was born last year (in their second year). Birds born the year before that or older will not have a difference in their feathers, since they will have replaced all of them instead of retaining some, like younger birds do (that is, unless they do a pre-alternate moult as well….). This difference in retained/replaced feathers is called a moult limit.

SY (second year) male Yellow Warbler with moult limit visible in the greater coverts.

ASY (after second year) male Yellow Warbler, lots of yellow edging on the primaries and alula, much blacker overall. (You can also see its pre alternate moult limit!)

SY male Yellow Warbler with more pointed outer rects, and less yellow in the tail. One central rect is being replaced (still growing).

ASY male Yellow Warbler with more truncate and generally fresher, brighter outer tail feathers with lots of yellow and dark shafts.

Another Yellow Warbler

Sarah with a Yellow Warbler

Some of the 100 Islands crew is back at Hakai right now, including our friend Katie Davidson (fellow VIU graduate)  who is working on her Masters degree with the mammal crew. She came out to visit us today which was great!

 

 

Sharlene banding a Yellow Warbler and Katie definitely not participating in any kind of bird banding activity 😉

As for what else we caught today, a couple resident Song Sparrows (recaptures), Orange-crowned Warblers, Wilson’s Warblers, one American Robin and two Pacific Wrens, which are always really fun to see up close.

Pacific Wren

Developing brood patch

One of the Pacific Wrens we caught was developing a brood patch, which means she has probably started laying eggs and has a nest nearby. Female birds lose feathers on a patch of skin on their underside to provide faster heat transfer to their eggs during incubation. The exposed skin also gets wrinkly and vascularized to provide more surface area for heat transfer.

Tomorrow is our last day of banding on Calvert Island, hopefully we catch something good before we have to leave! A kinglet would be nice! (…or a Catbird?! ..Northern Mockingbird?!) I will post our final numbers after tomorrow.

Insect plane on the dock at dawn.

Days 8 and 9

Yesterday was another nice clear day, and a busier day of banding again with 24 banded and 2 recaps, a new species for Calvert Island, and 3 new species for the year! Numbers were down from Thursday, but still definitely better than 10 birds a day.

Warbling Vireo – a first for Calvert Island!

We caught a Warbling Vireo which was a first for this spot, two Pacific-slope Flycatchers which were nice to see, we have been hearing them every day! We also caught the year’s first Swainson’s Thrush.

Pacific-slope Flycatcher close-up with some nice bristles.

Pacific-slope Flycatcher

Trying to catch… a fly…

 

Today we took the morning off to explore beautiful Calvert Island and took the afternoon to catch up on email and move some nets around. Tomorrow we’ll be ready to go again and hopefully get a few more species before we have to leave this great place!

View from the lookout.

We hiked up to the lookout, then to 7th Beach. We saw a few shorebirds and the ‘regular’ passerines, but it was pretty quiet, bird-wise. Saw some Sandhill Cranes, Bald Eagles, heard many Orange-crowned Warblers and Pacific Wrens, saw a Red-throated Loon and a few Common Loons out on the water. Fog was rolling in and out all day which made for some really nice west coast weather!

Sharlene at the lookout

Sarah at the lookout (with bug bucket hat – courtesy Eric – this hat has significantly improved my quality of life here.)

 

Sarah and Sharlene being really cool. Viewing this in full-size is recommend 😉

Sea stars, mussels, anemones and chiton during low tide.

The beautiful coastal forests of British Columbia are some of the most amazing environments I’ve ever seen.

After a day off we’re well-rested and already excited for getting back to banding tomorrow! We’ve moved the two slow nets out of the forest and set them up near the beach, closer to the rest of the nets – hopefully we’ll catch a few more interesting things!

Setting up nets!

More accurate photo.

 

-Sarah

 

Migration!!

This morning our numbers took a HUGE leap! We caught 46 new birds, and only 2 recaps!!! Crazy! At about 7:00 we got the year’s first Yellow Warbler, then quickly caught 14 more! With the YEWAs came many Orange-crowned Warblers and 5 Wilson’s Warblers – all had low fat stores. This is a sign they all migrated here last night and are stopping at Calvert Island to refuel before they continue their journey North, some all the way to Alaska.

ASY male Wilson’s Warbler

ASY female Wilson’s Warbler

What a crazy difference from yesterday’s 8 birds! There were also many more Wilson’s Warblers and Yellow Warblers hanging around the area, I watched 3 more Yellow Warblers bounce out of nets and I could see them in the trees around, lots of singing Wilson’s Warblers, too. Migration is RAD! 😀

The day was pretty busy so we didn’t get many photos, the ones we do have are mostly cellphone pictures.

Female Yellow Warbler

 

Male Yellow Warbler

It will be interesting to watch those Yellow Warblers gain fat, if we can recapture any of them while they stay here.

In our last net round we also managed to catch two more Townsend’s Warblers! Females this time, so Sharlene got her banding tick 🙂

Female Townsend’s Warbler

We were planning on taking a day off tomorrow but now we’re too excited to see what happens with the birds. Our exploring will have to wait, maybe Saturday 🙂

-Sarah

 

 

 

Townsend’s Warbler

Day 4 was our busiest day yet.. not “busy” by any means but we caught a total of 22 birds, with 12 new captures and 3 hummingbirds, including a first for the station – a Pine Siskin! (Also another banding tick for me 😀 )

We also caught the year’s first Hermit Thrush, it had one leucistic feather above the right eye. Leucism is a phenotype that can appear as white patches in feathers, hair, or skin. In birds, affected plumage lacks melanin pigment due to the cells responsible for melanin production being absent. It’s different from albinism which is a genetic mutation that results in an individual being unable to produce melanin pigment at all. This results in a good way to tell albinism from leucism –  albino individuals have pink eyes, while the iris pigmentation of leucistic birds is dark. Albino individuals are always completely white, they will never look ‘patchy’ like some leucistic birds.

SY (second year) Hermit Thrush with one leucistic feather above right eye.

In the afternoon for Kim’s last full day at Calvert we hiked to North Beach, the one beach Kim didn’t get to see last year. We found lots of shorebirds there, and spent some time trying to ID them all – found Semipalmated Plovers, Dunlin, Sanderling, Western Sandpipers and possibly some Semipalmated Sandpipers but we had a really hard time telling them apart!

North Beach

Shorebirds?! – sorry about the crap cellphone picture! It adds to the ID challenge.

Kim on the trail to North Beach

Nice views of pond on the North Beach trail.

After dinner there was a talk about seagrass put on by Fred Short and Cynthia Durance that Kim and I attended. It was really interesting and we learned a lot about the importance of seagrass conservation and its integral role in marine and estuarine ecosystems. They’re here looking into the extent of blue carbon (carbon captured by oceans and coastal ecosystems) sequestration in seagrasses. They have been collecting core samples from seagrass beds over 1 m deep! Which looks extremely difficult!

Days 5 and 6 were very very slow banding with only 7 birds caught! Yes, 7! Today was very slightly better with 8 birds caught.

But! The forest nets finally delivered. On day 5 we caught a Townsend’s Warbler! So the slow day was alright.

ASY male Townsend’s Warbler.

Hard to take a bad photo of this guy!

So pretty!

The amount of black in the feathers on his back and the uppertail coverts can be an indication of age. Also the shape of the white and black pattern on the edges of the median coverts can help.

Despite the low numbers, we also caught the year’s first Chestnut-backed Chickadee on day 5, which are always fun birds 🙂 In the afternoon, a boat came to take Kim back home before she goes away to work for the summer, and Sharlene arrived!

Today (day 6) was Sharlene’s first day and she brought bug hats with her, yay!! (Thanks Eric!) So now we get to look really cool. This morning was completely overcast during banding but now it’s sunny out so we’re planning to go look for more shorebirds on one of the beaches here in the afternoon. We might move a couple nets around tomorrow to try and catch a couple other things.

We only caught 5 new captures today and all of them were Orange-crowned Warblers carrying fat. This is a sign that they may be on the move soon; maybe some more birds will come to take their place in the next couple days..

-Sarah

 

 

BEKI!!

The past couple days have been pretty slow, rainy days, but I have a few things to talk about! 😉

Day 2 was rainy and a bit windy, we opened the nets a little later (5:30) and had to close around 10:30 as the rain picked up. It was another slow day with 24 birds caught, including 13 Rufous Hummingbirds. We caught a Wilson’s Warbler, a migratory warbler that hopefully we will see more of soon. Just before closing, we also caught a Belted Kingfisher!!! I joked in the early morning after watching a BEKI fly low that the slow day would be totally worth it if we caught one of those…. Didn’t expect it to actually happen. Was a banding tick for me, and just fyi, they smell like dead fish.

Our first Wilson’s Warbler.

I forgot to get a clearer picture, but you can almost see her syndactyl foot!

The amount of rufous in the breast band can help to determine age and sex in Belted Kingfishers.

Belted Kingfishers have syndactyl feet, meaning digits II and III are mostly fused. This foot pattern is common in kingfishers and hornbills (Order Coraciiformes). The fused digits provide a broad, stronger digit that kingfishers use to dig cavities for nesting in the banks of streams.

As for birds seen and heard, we’ve been hearing a ton of Townsend’s Warblers, and keep spotting a pair of unmistakable Sandhill Cranes flying over. They are always really cool to hear, they sound so prehistoric! If you haven’t heard them before, check out some of their sounds on Cornell’s site here.

Day 3 was similar numbers, another slow rainy day with lots of opening/closing nets. We caught six new Orange-crowned Warblers, a Wilson’s Warbler, and managed to catch that Golden-crowned Sparrow from yesterday, so we took a few photos this time 🙂

SY (second year) Golden-crowned Sparrow — check out the black flies to the left 😡

We did briefly open a 12th net by the compost area, where one unbanded Raven likes to hang out, along with a few other birds. He/she saw the net immediately, looked it up and down, seemed to look at us like we were idiots for trying, then flew away. We managed to catch a Steller’s Jay there, but it was a little too windy to keep open for long. We’ll try again in the next couple days.

The rest of our afternoon was spent entering data, enjoying the Field Station’s great food (this blog could easily be an excellent food blog…) and scenery, and hanging out with other researchers visiting the island. It’s cool to hear what everyone else is working on. There’s a great diversity of projects involving archeology, seagrass, starfish, soil, Black bears, and of course the 100 Islands project… I’m hoping to join the starfish crew in the intertidal zone for an afternoon, could be fun!

West Beach. We’ll be doing some more exploring here for sure!

–Sarah

First Day of Banding

The first day! Kim and I had the nets open at 5:15 this morning, ready to catch … a total of 15 birds. That includes five hummingbirds and five recaptured birds that already had bands from last year. We’re thinking most migrating birds haven’t quite hit this area yet, and they will hopefully make it up here in the next couple of days.

Part of the reason we wanted to test this area out is to see if migrating birds are using this area as a stopover. Island-hopping up the coast would be the shortest distance to make it farther North faster for migrating birds using the Pacific flyway. It will be interesting to see if they actually use the islands or if they are more likely to stick to the coast.

Despite such low numbers, we did manage to catch the first Golden-crowned Sparrow for the site. Only a couple were seen here last June, and none in August, so we’re hoping they will be on the move soon, and more birds will be moving North up to us.

An ASY (after second year) Fox Sparrow. These birds have an extra large hallux (hind toe) that they use to kick up dirt while foraging on the ground. They are recognized by the chevron pattern seen on the breast.

As for what we did catch today – a few Orange-crowned warblers and Song Sparrows, an American Robin, a Fox Sparrow, and one Pacific Wren. All of the hummingbirds we caught were Rufous Hummingbirds. No Oregon Juncos, other than a couple we saw at the compost area. We saw many eagles at one point, 26 in the sky all together! Saw and heard a few Sandhill Cranes which are always cool to hear, and there are a couple of Eurasian Collared Doves hanging around 🙂 There is one curious raven that has been hanging out but he/she hasn’t been brave enough to get into our nice shiny stuff yet. They were a problem last year so we’ll see how bold they get!

Beautiful ASY male Orange-crowned Warbler with lots of orange visible in the crown.

After banding we went for a walk to West Beach and set up two more nets in the forested area on the way there. We heard lots of Townsend’s Warblers which would be a great bird to catch. We also set up an additional three nets in the same area as the six we set up yesterday. So we have 11 in total now, hopefully this brings in a few more birds!

Can’t really complain about the scenery and accommodations here, everything is beautiful! I did find out I’m allergic to gnats and/or black flies, I look like I got punched 😀 But other than that all is well, we’re excited to have a few more nets open and what the next couple days bring us!

View of the dock at low tide from the Calvert Island Field Station, pretty crappy…

 

Introduction and Arrival!

Last year, banders from the VIU Bird Banding Station visited the Hakai Institute’s Calvert Island Field Station to pilot bird banding at this location during the summer. Elsie Hampshire and Eric Demers visited in June during the breeding season, and Kim Wetten and Elsie Hampshire visited in August to check out the beginnings of fall migration (visit their respective blogs here and here).

This year, Kim Wetten, Sarah Chalmers and Sharlene James will be having a first look at spring migration on Calvert Island.

After a 4 hour drive from Nanaimo to Port Hardy this morning, followed by a 3.5 hour (and bumpy) boat ride, Kim and I settled in, set up six nets and are ready to go for the first day of banding tomorrow morning! We will be here from May 5th until May 17th. We’re very excited! Stay tuned for more updates from this beautiful field station!

View from the dock at sunset at the Calvert Island Field Station.