North Shore Banding - Frank Taylor: November 2021

Hello Everyone,

This is my ninth and final report of the 2021 banding season, covering the weekend of October 30th, 2021. Also included is a breakdown of the season totals.

Saturday, October 30th

Trudi stayed home this weekend, so I met Rick and Chuck and Nancy at Hawk Harbor around 8:00 am. Todd came in a little later and set up at the falconer's site. Nancy, Rick, Chuck and I loaded up the banding gear into Rick's truck and we were off. We got started at 8:40 am. Winds were light out of the Northwest and the skies were clear.

This was one of the slowest days so far this season. We saw some eagles, rough-legs and a few red-tails, but they were passing over really high. The only action we saw was a Rough-legged hawk that made a long shallow stoop at Todd's nets, but it pulled up at the last second and we saw it leave the South side of the field. We stuck it out until 4:15, when we declared it a "Skunked Day" and closed down.

We got a total of 0 birds and no bounce-outs on Saturday.

0 Birds - a "Skunked Day".

Sunday, October 31st

Sunday morning, I got up and fixed some hot chocolate for the crew, we loaded up Rick's truck, and we drove out to the main blind. Skies were cloudy and the wind was a bit stronger from the Northwest.

Even with the good Northwest winds, we did not see many hawks starting to move. The Ravens ruled the day as they were all over the place. At 8:54, a dark Rough-legged hawk came in and made a bunch of screaming passes at the fake owl, hitting it twice. The only other thing of interest that day was a young spike buck that walked out toward us from the draw. It turned and faded back into the woods just North of the blind.

So at noon, we decided we had had enough, it was cold, and we are old, so we closed down for the season.

We got a total of 0 birds and no bounce-outs on Sunday.

0 Birds - a Skunked Day.

0 total birds for the weekend.

172 total birds for the season. (Last year we had a total of 147 birds.)

01. This was as close as we got to anything coming in all weekend.

02. A Halloween Rough-leg hitting the fake owl.

03. The young spike buck that came out to give us a look.

A very special THANK YOU goes to the Mattson family for letting us use their hay field for the 52nd year in a row.

Also a big THANK YOU goes to Bob Crosbie for supplying our lure birds this year.

A BIG THANK YOU to every one of our banding crew who came up to do the banding again this year. What a great and dedicated team of regulars we have. Trudi Taylor, Rick Dupont, Nancy & Chuck Schotzko and Todd Rosengren: without your dedication and co-operation, we would not be able to do this thing we love so much, year after year.

Thanks for being such great friends and sharing an interest in our modest program!

THANK YOU SOOOO MUCH!!!!!!

We had a total of 172 birds for the season. (Last year we had a total of 147 birds.)

We had a total of 18 bounce-outs this year. (Last year we had 30 bounce-outs.)

Here it is, the final breakdown for 2021.