After a busy summer and some training of a new (& stellar) crew for our fall migration season, I'm aiming to get back on the ball and post at least somewhat regularly ....
We had a late start to the breeding season up at Lucky Peak - likely due to the cool weather in late May/early June that stalled all those Western Tanagers in the valley areas - and we've seen the impact during our breeding season banding (early June to early July). Normally we see fledglings by late June and the pulse of young birds didn't really begin until well into June. So far it appears that birds that arrived before the cool spring weather (such as Nashville Warblers) were able to breed "on time" whereas late arrivers such as Western Tanagers, Warbling Vireos, and MacGillivray's Warblers were delayed by up to a couple weeks in their breeding efforts. Thus, not sure if their delayed spring arrival will impact their reproductive success and/or their fall departure timing ....
Here's a shot of our large group of volunteers that came up for our June 26 summer banding day, including (from back left): Kathl, Gary, Ruth (visiting from UT), Jody, Mike (visiting from Portland), Heidi, & (front row, from left) Dave, Greg, Deniz, Ayla, Carol, & Sylvia.Our fall migration season began on July 16th and we've had a great start so far. Not as busy bird-wise as the last 2 seasons (likely due to the reproduction delays mentioned above) but we once again have a great crew (see below; Marissa just arrived a few days ago so we'll get a new team shot soon ...). We've already enjoyed several visitors (including Golden Eagle Audubon Society today) and we're looking forward to more!
Early-season team shot: (from left) Heriberto, Kris, Gary, Jay, & Heidi
Heriberto is from Jalisco, Mexico (and has worked with many of the same species on the wintering grounds for many years), Kris is from southern California (and is a long-time birder & Audubon member), Gary (Mountain Home) is in his 5th year of volunteering on our project, and Heidi is an undergrad at Boise State U. who's been hooked on birds for years already.
Katie Babcock & campers from the Tumble Time program during a June 17 field trip.
2 comments:
Still loaded in my feed reader so you have at least one committed reader! Sorry I couldn't make it up with Audubon today, but plan to visit multiple times this year. Keep up the great work!
Make it two committed readers, I suppose, although I really was getting sick of reading about Willow Flycatcher #2460-68120 day after day... Thanks for the pics and update -- makes me miss it as usual...
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