Hello all from the small town of Brooks in southern Alberta, Canada!
Savannah Sparrow Nest
I have been out here in the northern mixed grassland prairies for about a month now and have enjoyed seeing how different it is from the dry and hot grasslands of the southwestern United Stated that I am so used to. There are very few new birds out here and in fact many of them are very familiar but I am enjoying very different behavior. Most of the birds I am working with out here are birds that overwinter back home or just pass through during migration so it is nice to see them in full breeding plumage and singing their heads off. The reason I am out here is to work for the University of Manitoba which is looking at how the oil industry is impacting breeding grassland birds with our target species being prairie obligates or birds that need healthy, native grassland habitat in order to successfully breed. Our target species are Sprague’s Pipits and Chestnut-collared Longspurs but some other species that we are also looking at include Baird’s Sparrows, Grasshopper Sparrows, Horned Larks, Western Meadowlarks, Vesper Sparrows, Savannah Sparrows, and Clay-colored Sparrows.
Chestnut-collared Longspur
We’re using several methods to find out how the birds are responding to oil and gas wells and pumping which include surveys of birds around the oil sites and a LOT of rope dragging in the same areas to find the birds’ nests. For those of you not familiar with rope-dragging it is just that, dragging a giant rope across the grasslands. The reason why this works so well with finding bird nests is because the birds put their nests at the bases of the grass clumps and the rope rolls over the top of the grass (not damaging the nest at all) and we watch for the bird on the nest (usually an incubating female) to get scared and flush or fly off the nest. It is a lot of working dragging the rope around but definitely worth it! There are also a lot of small ponds scattered across the prairie out here which is the breeding habitat of many of the wintering ducks we see back home! There are Northern Shovelers everywhere as well as Blue-winged Teal, Northern Pintail, Canvasback, Redhead, Ring-necked Ducks, American Wigeon, and many others! Some other birds that I’ve also been lucky enough to see breeding out here in these grasslands are Willet, Sharp-tailed Grouse, Marbled Godwit, Wilson’s Phalarope, Ring-billed Gull, Franklin’s Gull, Short-eared Owl, and Upland Sandpiper. I am amazed at how diverse it is out here and I love seeing these familiar winter birds on their summer grounds! Canada has definitely been an interesting experience so far! One of the hardest things I’ve had to deal with so far is how late the sun stays up. In the middle of summer I am ecstatic when the sun is up till 9 but out here in is still pretty bright till 11:00pm which can be annoying when you have to wake up at 4:00am to start the day. Overall Canada has been a great experience so far and we’ll see what the rest of the summer has to offer!
Prairie near Brook, Alberta
Happy Birding!
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