#800: MAPS: Banding 30,000 Songbirds
Since 2011, Syncrude and other oil sands companies, has supported a bird banding program that covers a north-south stretch of 250 kilometers around Fort McMurray.
Leading the project is biologist Dr. Ken Foster of Own Moon Environmental.
Over the past five years, his researchers have banded about 30,000 migrating songbirds.
DR KEN FOSTER: Our target species are what we call land birds, species that nest on the land and near ground level. Our nets only stretch so high. They are less than 3 meters tall. And so we’re focused on the birds that use predominantly these habitats for nesting and foraging. They would be warblers, sparrows, woodpeckers, chickadees. Those would be the majority of the catches.
These songbirds migrate north from the southern United States and some even from South America.
DR KEN FOSTER: Somewhere in the vicinity of 5 to 10 percent of the birds we band come back. Most of them come back to nearly the exact same location where they were originally captured and banded.
According to Dr. Ken Foster, the bird banding program is already showing continent wide population cycles.
Thanks today to SYNCRUDE
FOR INNOVATION ANTHOLOGY
I’M CHERYL CROUCHER
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Syncrude
Program Date: 2016-08-04