Subject: Forested landscapes study
Date: Jul 14 08:54:50 1997
From: "G.Spitler/L.Cannon" - gspitler at awinc.com


Hi Tweeters,
The responses to my question about juvenile vs adult Swainson's Thrush suggested to me that there may be several of us participating in the study and who are on Tweeters. It certainly was nice to "hear" from others involved in the project. So I'd thought I share how my activities are proceeding to this point.
By way of introduction, our census spots are all in our "neighborhood", which is the north end of Kootenay Lake. Basically we are surrounded by forest, lake and rivers. So all of our sites are well forested. In fact, finding any "forest patches" was quite a challenge.
All Spring we had been seeing Sharp-shinned Hawks, and we did have some possible sightings on our first visits. But none of our second visits produced any hawk response. Disappointing. I'm sure there are here, we just haven't gotten them.
In terms of thrushes, we live in Swainson's heaven. We've got them by the ton. We did find one Veery nest that was being built but it disappeared soon after our first visit. In fact the Veeries have disappeared. We've had one possible sighting of a Hermit Thrush that was probably passing through and nothing else. I'm beginning to think that there is no such bird---it is a Roger Tory Peterson joke. As soon as the weather improves and the snow melts, I going to do some searching at higher elevations, just to see one.
I'm greatly enjoying participating in the study. I'm learning lots. And it is disappointing to play tapes at 8 different sites and not get one little hawk to make a small comment in response.
Hope other Tweeters don't mind using bandwidth on this topic. I'm sure I'll find out.
Cheers,
Gail Spitler
Johnsons Landing, BC
gspitler at awinc.com