A discussion six years ago at the Puget Sound Birding Festival brought Cindy Easterson into the bird-banding community.
No training for would-be bird banders was available locally, so Easterson, who lives near Mill Creek, went to the Rocky Point Bird Observatory on Vancouver Island for training.
“It was absolutely fabulous,” Easterson said.
Since then Easterson has worked with bird surveys and banding, including the Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survival (MAPS) program.
Now she has created her own project, managed by Chris Southwick, through the Puget Sound Bird Observatory. It’s a winter study of fox sparrows in three sites at Shoreline Community College.
Easterson had noticed on previous outings that one site was the only one with fox sparrows. Among the dominate plants were invasive species such as blackberries and butterfly bushes.
So do fox sparrows prefer those plants or native plants or a mix of both? If the sparrows preferred invasive to native species, could a persistent fox sparrow population be ‘retrained’ to use a mix of native plants?
“Our project is essentially a habitat study: What happens if we chop out some of this invasive vegetation? How do we manage blackberries in an invasive area?” she said. “What should we replace Himalayan blackberries with when creating a habitat?”
After two years of massaging the protocol and doing some banding, the five-year project, using colored bands, started last month.
Before the study started, “We’d seen a broad pattern of fox sparrows not staying in the area. They’d be there for just a week or so and then pass through,” Easterson said.
But there was a chance that some of that population hung around, raising the question of whether they used the site as a wintering habitat.
“We don’t have enough data points to make any conclusion. Maybe it’s not a wintering patch and we’ve had a peek of something important (concerning preferred habitat) on their migration,” she said.
Prior to the official start of the study, fox sparrows had been banded and many later recaptured either passing through again or because they were staying for a week or maybe much longer, Easterson said
Studies in the 1930s have provided the standard for how fox sparrows migrate, information generally accepted for decades.
“But a lot has happened since the 1930s,” Easterson said. “We may be finding some new information on how they move from their breeding grounds. It’s very exciting for me. New information could be valuable in terms of understanding fox sparrows.”
It will take four more years and many more volunteer hours from bird banders to accumulate enough data to draw conclusions.
“They’re really secretive. They hide deep in the bushes. I do a survey every week, between 1 ½ and 3 hours,” she said. “I’m doing the same thing they are, being secretive, quiet, calling and hoping that they will respond.”
After observing many hours of behavior, Easterson had a signature observation.
“My ‘Aha!’ moment came when I found out how clever they are. John Marzluff has done wonderful work with crows, finding out that crows (can even recognize people). I am convinced that my little returning fox sparrows recognize certain things,” she said.
Can they communicate something about staying out of the mist net? Maybe, “Danger! The humans have set up another trap!”
“When the nets are set up, somehow, I feel, there is some communication between fox sparrows. That’s in terms of anecdotal observations in watching their behaviors. I feel like they may share information similar to crows,” she said.
And when Easterson plays a fox sparrow call, one might respond once.
“I can’t trick them a second time. They never respond a second time.”
Sharon Wootton can be reached at 360-468-3964 or www.songandword.com.
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