After being delayed by high winds and rain late last week which brought a few small trees down over our nets and trails, the Lesser Slave Lake Bird Observatory finally completed our breeding-focused Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship (MAPS) program on May 28, 2024. In general, MAPS went smoothly with a few delays caused by weather and one caused by a mother bear and her two cubs.

It was a year for firsts with captures of our first Varied Thrush of the MAPS program and our station’s first ever Broad-winged Hawk! The biggest first, however, was a change to our protocols. To detect if year-to-year differences are due to differences in bird populations and not due to how much effort …

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