Birds, birds and birds

These past few weeks seem to have had quite a large focus on birds. Birds of many different sizes, from hummingbirds to owls. Now for me birds are alright, I guess. I am fairly indifferent, so this has been a somewhat overwhelming amount of birds.

The first birdy thing is that we do a bird walk every Thursday morning which involves meeting in the car park by 7:45 and going off to a local area to walk around and count birds. I am terrible at identifying birds. I have been here who other 4 months doing weekly counts and I am still useless. But I’m trying, I promise. We identify, and when I say ‘we’ I mostly mean Ted who lead the walks and has been birding for years, by sight and by listening to their calls and songs. Before coming here, I didn’t realise the birds had both calls and songs which are different, also means twice the amount of noises to remember! So, we walk for a couple of hours, very slowly, and take counts of all the different birds we see and hear. Even though I don’t know any the birds it is nice to walk through the forest or wherever we are counting. I honestly think that by the end of the term I will be able to identify a few, but then I will be back home in England where the birds are totally different and will have to start all over again!

Our biggest bird focus in terms of our conservation projects has been swallows, particularly barn swallows but also cliff swallows. Populations of these swallows are declining worldwide due to habitat loss, changes in farming practice and adverse climatic conditions. Every week we go out to a variety of different barns in the local area and check their barns for nests. These nests are actually pretty interesting, when you think of most bird nests you think of something that is mostly round, in a tree and made out of things like twigs and straw (right). Barn swallow nests are completely different, they are found high up on walls, often with no support under the bottom, and are made of mud pellets and embedded with grass
(left).

We check the nests to see if any eggs have been laid and how many, then in the continuing weeks we can see when they hatch and can understand the survival rate of the nests. To check the nest, we use a really scientific, technological tool which consist of a mirror on a stick. We have also been banding the chicks. This is done so that in the future researchers can study the bird’s migration and dispersal, and also the population dynamics and lifespan.

Whereas barn swallows’ nest inside building, cliff swallow nests are found on the exterior mostly grouped together. We don’t have a particular project on these birds but we do have a colony on one of the birds on site and so we are attempting to band these birds as well to gather data. Banding adult birds is a lot more complicated then banding chicks, for one thing the chicks can’t really fly yet, also the adults are very smart. As soon as the see the net they become suspicious and fly around it, which is fair enough. To catch these guys, we have a set up which kind of looks like a giant badminton net, but the net can move up and down. It starts just below where their nests are, then we wait for a bunch to fly into the nest, then as soon as they come out there is a frantic pull on the net to pull it up in the hopes of one of them flying into the net. Once caught, they bird is looked over checking its age, sex and if there are any parasites and it is also weighed. Then the numbered band gets put on their leg and off they go. The whole thing takes under five minutes and doesn’t hurt them at all.

Now we go small, to hummingbird banding. The most common hummingbirds found in British Columbia are Rufous and Anna’s hummingbirds. These are tiny birds who hover in mid-air at rapid wing-flapping rates which are audible to humans. Hummingbirds get their energy from nectar and they also use sugar-water from feeders. We have a few set up and are frequently visited. In terms of banding, this starts at 6am(!), which is an unearthly hour for me. Our strategy for catching them involves nets over the feeders which can drop down when a hummingbird is in there. It is much easier to catch hummingbirds then swallows, but the banding process is very similar, albeit a much smaller band. Then we release them. This is pretty cool actually; you hold them in your hand and they sit there for a couple of seconds and you can feel their heart beating then they are off!

Now for the most exciting bird, in my opinion, the Great horned owl. You don’t tend to see owls too often, but we are pretty sure there is a pair that are living on site, as two owls have been spotted in the woods occasionally. A couple of months ago we first ‘discovered’ the owls because we found lots of owl pellets on the ground near to the main house. Owl pellets are made up from the indigestible parts of the rodents and small birds they eat, i.e. the bones, teeth, feathers and fur, which the owl will spit out. You can actually dissect these to find out what the owl has eaten recently! After finding the pellets we started looking up into the trees to see if we could spot them. Not only did we spot an adult, we spotted chicks! Adult Great horned owls are darkly coloured and have little tufts of hair on the side of their heads, hence the ‘horned’ part of the name. But the nestlings are white and fluffy, with really intense eyes.

Great horned owl nestling, picture taken through a scope

Coming back to present day, we had guessed that the young had fledged, and the adult pair were hanging out in the woods. Then one morning at about 6:30am, Ryan, one of the staff that lives onsite, was sorting out the ducks and noticed a Great horned owl had got stuck in the poultry net. He thought she was dead at first, but she came around, so he cut her out, placed her under a bin and called the animal rescue. Whilst we were waiting for animal rescue to arrive, we checked her out. Seeing a wild predator so up close was incredible. She was really calm and docile, potentially from shock, and really beautiful. Once the animal rescue arrived, they told us that she was a female and probably the mother of the chicks we had seen earlier in the year. They said that they could tell she had been upside down for a long time due to how bloodshot her eyes were, so it was amazing that Ryan found her when he did. They said they are going to look after her for a few weeks to allow for recovery, there were some injuries to her wing and leg, but that she could be released back at Brooksdale!

The adult female that got caught in the poultry net

So that was my particularly bird focused week. The highlight was definitely seeing the owl so close, obviously not the best circumstances but still, she’s on the mend and can go back to being totally wild soon.

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading.

H

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