Fall songbird migration is already winding down at the Lesser Slave Lake Bird Observatory. Big waves of most of our warbler species have come and gone. Yet the true vanguards of fall, such as Snow Goose, American Pipit, or White-crowned Sparrow have yet to arrive. Oddly, there were three very late-season families at the station this week from rather different species: Least Flycatcher, Swainson’s Thrush, and Red-eyed Vireo.

We have again been taking tail samples from a small subset of birds in collaboration with the Canadian Migration Monitoring Network (CMMN) to reveal important migratory connectivity and genetics of Canada-wide populations. This week we collected our first sample from a Pa…

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