Reed and I banded perhpas our last rough leg yesterday as they are becoming more scarce as the weather perhaps is finally pushing them south. The one we caught yesterday hit the trap in perhaps 25 seconds, The challenge to banding these beautiful hawks is to present the trap without them flying off and this particular hawk did not budge from its perch as reed set the trap. I was curious to see how we might do once there was snow cover and mice might be harder to catch but two other hawks we encountered were quite skittish and took off as we slowed the vehicle down. This is the real challnge in trying to catch the hawks. This is definitely the latest we have ever caught and banded a hawk in the area however this is also the latest we have ever attempted to capture a hawk. I may try a couple of more times as time permits which is getting more scarce as my list of to do's before winter becomes longer as my neglect of these chores to band hawks has hit the wall of winter. Why must life get in the way of banding. Hope to have more to report.
On another note all the nets are down at the marsh and with Mike reporting a small flock of redpolls near the marsh I have to hope we will be banding redpolls at the marsh in the not too distant future. Once numbers increase we will be setting up our feeding station at the north end of the marsh whcih takes much more effort as it is a snowshoe into the area. We will be keeping our southern feeders up and running and to see what we can attract to the area. I know with all of the reports of boreal chickadeesi n Quebec we are all hopeful we can attarct more to the area. Hope to see folks at the marsh when we have birds to band and the right weather to operate.