We’ve been doing well finding HUGO nests (13 so far!), but they’re not the only nests we find. The sub-arctic boreal wetlands are an incredibly understudied ecosystem. Many of the shorebirds that breed here have relatively little known about them compared to their temperate and arctic cousins. For this reason (and others) most species are listed as “birds of conservation concern” by the USFWS. This project aims to fill critical knowledge gaps on HUGOs that come from in-depth study, but to also find, monitor, and derive some information on breeding success for all other water birds and common predators. Waterbirds in this case includes waterfowl, gulls,and shorebirds mostly and is our way of minimizing the amount of time trying to track down those pesky passerine nests. If we we happen to find a sparrow nest, we will monitor it if time allows, but we don’t actively search for them. That’s true for most waterfowl as well, we don’t seek them out, but we tend to find quite a few looking for godwits. For those, we monitor them as when we have time in order to track predation rates and breeding success. Shorebirds and predators we actively search for, monitor regularly, and collect some additional data, but we only look for them during the course of looking for godwits.
The crew is doing a great job this year nest searching. Not only are we doing pretty well with Godwit nests, but we have 9 other shorebird nests, 60 Mew Gull nests, and 64 other nests, before today. We’ve found a few fun ones and all the common species. Below is a list of the species we have found nests for so far!
Nests for:
Hudsonian Godwit
Short-billed Dowitcher
Lesser Yellowlegs
Mew Gull
Bonaparte’s Gull
Herring x Glaucous-winged Gull
Arctic Tern
Canada Goose
Northern Pintail
Green-winged Teal
Mallard
Northern Shoveler
Sandhill Crane
Common Raven
Bald Eagle
Savannah Sparrow
The crew is doing a great job this year nest searching. Not only are we doing pretty well with Godwit nests, but we have 9 other shorebird nests, 60 Mew Gull nests, and 64 other nests, before today. We’ve found a few fun ones and all the common species. Below is a list of the species we have found nests for so far!
Nests for:
Hudsonian Godwit
Short-billed Dowitcher
Lesser Yellowlegs
Mew Gull
Bonaparte’s Gull
Herring x Glaucous-winged Gull
Arctic Tern
Canada Goose
Northern Pintail
Green-winged Teal
Mallard
Northern Shoveler
Sandhill Crane
Common Raven
Bald Eagle
Savannah Sparrow