good morning welcome to changes the program on sustainability i'm susan gregory the coordinating producer of the show and today's program was recorded last week actually travis barrington talked with professor eric demmer hers from v i you about bird banding bird observation and also ways to help our local wild birds to maintain healthy populations w mention in conjunction with that that the annual christmas bird count is coming up in the ny mo this coming sunday december twenty eighth and more volunteers are needed if you'd like more information on that you ca you don't have to have experience you can just be an enthusiast and help out the ones who do have experience will mention this again later in the program and also have that information on our podcast as well as the changes facebook page but now here is the show hello welcome to changes on the c h l why i'm travis banking from the i'm a recycling exchange and today i'm going to take a bit of a departure from my normal talks about cycling in zero waste and those issues and i'm going to return to an interest of mine in biology and interview dr eric to mary's a biology professor at vancouver  university about some bird banding programs he's involved with and just his general overall interest in ornithology so welcome eric thanks travis and good morning to everyone why don't we start with i know taking some courses with you at school here at v a you that you  very large interest in birds and bird watching and and ornithology in general so why don't we just talk about where that started and how you got involved well it's interesting that you're asking that because you probably wouldn't think that the interest would start where it actually did when i was a kid i was always interested in nature always be playing around wetlands lakes forests near or where i live that is and when i grew up and came back and ironically my interest in birds although i was interested in birds all along my interest really piqued when at some point i somehow bore owed a friend's pellet gun and happened to be playing with it and you know shooting little bottle caps or things like that and then at some point i thought i saw a robin on a wire and thought for whatever reason i thought i was going to have kind of freaking out by shooting near it and lo and behold that i was in really good shooter and actually ended up hitting the robin right on and it fell to the ground totally and somehow that traumatized me enough that i recognized that i was going to be a shooting birds for the rest of my life but rather by spending time looking at them and really learning something about them so that's very humble beginning of my interest in birds really doesn't seem like it should have started that way well it's an on a start though a close up view that a lot of people don't get and again my interest in color g and in all things nature really continued but when it came down to choosing what i was going to do furder beyond my education i was interested in getting a summer job with a professor there i do university and i had made contact with people who were working on freshwater ecology and on fish and as well on professors they were doing research on birds and it just turns out that by just  coincidence that the professor who was doing bird work was going on sabbatical that year so i couldn't really work with him and i ended up working on fish instead and that pretty much became the path of my career for the next fifteen years or so and so ye so i did most of my graduate work in my early career was spent working on and looking at issues related to fish but since i became a professor at university my passion really continued doing a lot of bird watching or what we called birding in in a circle and spending a lot of time observing birds and being interested by them and eventually that became more of my field of interest and became to specialty that i took on here at dyke continue to  own university excellent so i know the season just sort of wound down and took in the nets about it a little while ago but when we talk about how that you got started with that program at the marsh and just what a typical session is like there yet a few years ago i took a workshop on bird banding it's always something that interested me but i never had an opening or opportunity to look into it and when i took that session i really became really interested in the to scientific research involved were around the banding in lottery a bird populations and i thought at the time that this would be a really good activity to undertake at the u and to share with students and so two years ago i was on sabbatical so that's that allowed me some time to accelerate my training and eventually obtain a permit when i can and wildlife service and then start some bird banding activities or better tubs marsh so i approached the city and ducks unlimited who are the managers of that land and discuss with them the possibility of despair of establishing a research and monitoring project there and they were very welcoming and made it easy for number of missed nets and those are nets that we use to capture birds and with these nets once we capture birds we extract them out of the net and bring them to us table where we process them for a number of bio metrics and other measurements of interest  first thing starts with identifying them applying a band if no band is present so induced bands are unique bands across north america soul when we put a band the band has nine digits and no water birds in north america will get the same number and in these birds whether we recaptured them or someone else will be uniquely identified will know exactly which bird has been captured after we've identified them banded and we measured them we measure age their sex if possible as well  as measurements tail measurements and we estimate fats corso how much fat they are carrying and then we wait and release them and this way we can obtain really valuable biological data on the population of bird whether good breeding migrating or spending the winter there why don't you i know i'm going to few times so i know it's an early start so maybe some people are wondering what time we do this and what it's like when we get out in the morning yeah that's one of the thing that often people who are interested first then discovered that it's something that you have to be really passionate about because we do get up usually have we start half an hour before sunrise to peak activity for bird usually is or in the early morning these birds have been spending the entire night without feeding resting and so when the first hours of the morning they are quite motivated to move around and find food and forage for insects or berries and so that's always the most active period so most people interested in birding or in bird banding will usually be early risers in the morning and it's literally the early bird gets the worm so that we get up usually half an hour before sunrise and our activities usually take place all the way in for six hours so from that time until mid morning or noon or so depending on the time of year and when the sun rises yeah it is an early morning but it's a lot of fun for sure why why bother times march what was so special about this site that you want to set up the program there one of the unique aspects of but at times marshes it's an urban park so it's located right in the middle of it's a little bit of a not always system the middle of the city that it's surrounded by various land used for urban neighborhoods to golf course highway and so on so and although we have a lot of parks within it is important to understand what their conservation value of these parks maybe so but are types park has been a well known destination for birders or nature into easiest and we see a lot of birds there but our goal is to day and expand this and then try to really see what the value of these parks might be for bird populations again whether day are breathing there so a number of birds choose to breed there because the habitat the suitable for that and some species just don't migrate it true perhaps going to alaska or to central coast to b c may stop over during migration because there's opportunities for them to feed there or some other species may spend a winter there soul it's important to understand what the value of these habitat features are especially in an inner landscape like a city where are so many other areas that may not be suitable for those birds so you mention there's a lot of value in this research to find out about birds that are moving through in the value of this area as well are there any other goals you have with the program i know there's a lot of volunteers and students that come out yeah this project is basically divided into three goals the main goal is to monitor the bird population that occupied this urban park as well as do some targeted research projects on some species  if we find out some species would be more desirable to look at a little bit in further detail we can do to once we've obtained more data over a few years a secondary goal is to use to train students definitely it is it an opportunity to provide experiential learning activities for students at vancouver island university who are taking biology programs or other programs who may want to learn more hands on about ecology or bird biology directly and then a third goal is to do some public education to provide an opportunity for the public at large or groups of children or even adults who are interested in nature interested in birds who would like to learn more about research methods and how we understand bird population who want to visit and there's nothing like seeing birds right up close to really get fascinated by their ecology by their charisma and to really understand the the evolution and behavior of critters that basically are all around us that we see all the time yeah and yet we see so fleetingly it's really amazing i've been out a few times to actually have a bird specially one of the more charismatic and colorful ones that you mentioned in your hand and or in somebody else's hand where you can see them and see all the details and all the like you said the result of evolution the feathers and everything it's really amazing so you mention the migratory pathway and everything that it touches a part of so this is i guess part of a larger larger ecosystem than just what's in our city as well do you feel it is very important to research and share that with other people who are part of this network as well yeah definitely is there are a lot of bird banding station across north america and they're usually located in target places like this so along mike migration path and the main goal of this is to understand these bird population as they are moving through how to use habitat and how they establish breeding sites and so on  the east coast of north america there is a network of bird betting station that's been established there and there are quite a few banding station at a really allows us to understand how bird populations are migrating or using the landscape on the west coast on the other hand because it presents a mountain a much more complex landscape there's not as many bird banding stations in fact here in british columbia there are two banding station located in the lower mainland then we do some bird banding here and i'm a letter was there's no water station on the coast and there's only one more or two more within interior british columbia and we happen to be almost ignored most stations so that means that all the birds that we band of go further north we really have no idea where to go we just know if it were the last stop for dam to be captured and so painting program can be very useful because some species don't breathe here de brito elsewhere but for us to go and study them on their breeding ground would be so difficult because they would be spread everywhere whereas if we can capture damage during their migration we can then understand something about their population and that's one of the goals of bird banding but because you mention about why is it important to share or for the larger whole and why would research in birds especially migratory birds in their population is that going to show any patterns indicative of a larger ecosystem health over a large area say all of the west coast or all of north america so it's also important to understand that most migratory birds don't necessarily spend all their t ime where we see them a lot of species migrate down to the united states mexico or central america or even south america and we only we only really get a small glimpse of their entire life just by a small amount of time that they spend here in north america when they're breathing or migrating through so any bit of information and we can acquire helps us understand the overall health of the population their migration path how they're doing while they're on migration and if we understand a little bit about their their status while they're migrating it might tell us something about what's happening on their breeding ground of what's happening on their wintering ground and that's why the network of bird banding station across all of north america really helps us understand the status  bird population across all of north america while we're talking about these migratory species is a bit off the prepared questions verges and wondering maybe some people like to know what are some interesting species that they would see coming through n more and more do we find some of these some of these unique sightings but are we we've had a few species that come through that were unexpected and probably our best highlight has been a species called the  that's a species debt that is not uncommon in north america it's not uncommon in british columbia but it is not very common along the coast and especially on day one so to capture one of them alone with one of its sister species the warbling verio which is so much more abundant for us today and that made it an interesting sighting for us but the best time to see species that would be unexpected on our coast is usually during the fall during fall migration you have young birds that have just been born a few months ago this is their first migratory trip and these birds have to make the amazing migration down to two sometimes like us into mexico or central america and if you've never done the trip all it is is by going by instinct no wonder bird is showing them how to do this they're just going by instinct and sometimes the instinct don't necessarily get them into the right place and instead of going straight south some of them go west and hit the coast and then we get to see them when they show up here sometimes some species that breed east of the rockies show up on our coast and again it's because their instincts maybe have not necessarily worked out it's unknown to most of the time what would happen to these birds are going to survive rail now of virginia rail is not uncommon bird but are tubs march in fact there is probably quite a few that live there maybe you if not a few hundreds but deer extremely secretive birds deals live primarily on the ground they don't fly very much there are about the size of a large shore bird and they have large feet and really wetlands are their preferred habitat and when you look at a wetland you see all these cat tails and all these plants and to us it looks like it's all although they are present to very unlikely to get captured into our midst now it's because they don't usually fly very much and are not sort of set up off the ground and soul disuse or just by chance one of them happened to fly into our net which gave us a good being able to see one of them right up close but i ask a question just about the nets are they only when you are there to monitor them and the other question is is there trauma associated like when a bird flies into one is there any trauma to the birds or just some of them end up having problems after that yes so that the nets are we use are called mist net so they are panels a very fine mesh net that is each net is about forty feet long or twelve meter long and about ten feet tall or two and a metre tall and they're set up just off the ground and they're stretched in areas where we believe birds are likely to fly and they don't see it and or they may not see it and that and then they fly across those areas and then they get caught in the net when they get caught the net basically just held in a small pocket inside the net  usually while the nets are always only deployed when we are at the site doing our bird banding activities when we're not present at a site there for a really tight in close so that no birds would accidentally get caught in them on the other question about this capture of these bird lead to some stress it would be naive to say that it does not that it does not cause a little bit of discomfort obviously one can think that we pay place ourself in the body of a bird we probably would rather be chasing worms and whatever our food is rather than being caught in the net and so in our activities we try as much as possible to accelerate the process to not hold birds any longer than we need to an inch try to do this as safe possible and so that comes with a lot of training a lot of time spent with one on one training and supervision making sure that everyone understands the methods and making sure to deprive well qualified personnel is available to handle these birds thank you know there is an excellent question to bring up so you mentioned before to use the network of other banding sites and they're putting bans on birds as well and i remember being out there a couple times and you mentioning the incredible odds of having a recapture from another site has ever happened with one of our birds one of the birds you banded or even for captured in other bird from a different station yeah that's often a question that most people who get first get involved in bird banding think about they wonder what are the odds that a bird that we put a band on will be caught by someone else or vice versa the odds of somebody else's bird will be caught in our nets now you have to put in perspective that are nuts or if you look at the entire landscape arnett's are just a tiny tiny tiny less than a needle in an entire landscape so the odds of somebody else catching a bird are ridiculously small and so overall across north america people believe the rate of recapture is around one in ten thousand that means we would have to band about ten thousand birds to maybe hope to on average to hope to recapture a bird from somewhere else or to h somebody else catch a bird so the main goal of bird bending although those are really exciting when it happens of course if i put a band in a bird and it recaptured somewhere in arizona i would be just elated to see that happens  used to landscape in the habitat where we captured on so if we band a sparrow and we capture recapture it within maybe three weeks later and we know what it is still present at the site it may give us a really good idea t breeding at the site and maybe as to where its territory is located and if we recaptured his bird the following year which we often recaptured varies from year to year and that gives us an idea of how these birds return to the same site how the breed at the same location and also maybe something about the survival or more time or rate of mortality and what are able to make it from one season to another speaking of recapturing birds of the same site i do remember there was a famous killer thrower that we would catch every pretty much every session it seems sometimes would you like to tell that story yeah so some birds become fairly famous for us and when we captured these birds we start giving them unique names because they become frequent flyers into our nets so for instance there's one warbler who became well known as wayne and the reason why he became well known as wayne and i have to do a little bit of reference searching here is because the number for  number as i mentioned it's nine digits so it's two seven zero zero nine three three nine nine just because the last two numbers were nine nine we happened to called his bird wayne as in wayne gretzky when we first captured it turns out that in two thousand and thirteen we recaptured this bird eight times during the season so we know that it is a male common yellow through it and it does breed at the site and so it gives us a really good idea that this male  likes the habitat near where we are located and then in two thousand and fourteen we've recaptured this bird again considered this bird has flown back and flown down to mexico or central america to all spend the winter and came back estab territory nearly identical spot for the previous years and we caught it many more times since so this bird has been caught fourteen times since we first banded it in april two thousand and thirteen so data like this tell us a lot about the survival of the habitat used a breeding fidelity to fact that despard has returned to exactly the same spot to breed and likely may have been successful in lots of young as well already know was the common and so a common yellow throat especially a male is a bird has a really bright yellow throat as the name implies and has a black mask kind of like the bandit mask that it has around its face and a little white line above the eye water present that's where the spirits breathed a very abundant in factor to bird that we catch the most butter tubs and so they are present there and so if you ever come across them certainly looking for bands especially had better tubs but they were only present during the summer because they do migrate south over winter ok so everyone who's walking around near the rivers in season should be keep close so i know also in addition to the banding there's a nest box program it  d tell us about that and how it's been successful yeah we put in some nest boxes at butter tubs there is a large open field and so we've set up some nest box primarily to try to attract swallows unfortunately swallow's which many people know swallow's we've seen swallows especially the barn swallow which is very seems very common we see them sometimes establish their mud nests under the eaves of a of your roof but unfortunately swallows are part of a insectivores which means they catch their food on the wing while flying which are insects and that group of birds his stuff rain fairly strongly from population decline and the reason for these declines are still quite debated and so our goal there are was to try to set up next boxes to try to encourage them to know because the tree swallow the one that we're targeting three swallows are cavity nesters so they require holes in trees or usually  been made by woodpeckers vacated by woodpeckers for nesting area and those sometimes are limited in trees with holes in them or often undesirable may be taken down or don't stay up all very long and soul there's a limitation as to how many nesting site that these tree swallows can have and so by putting up a nice box we mimic those holes and trees and we can really attract them and so we set up ten nest box of butter tubs during the first year of the study in two thousand and thirteen we end up with four nests and these ten boxes which was fairly good would a few young death resulted from that and then in two thousand and fourteen we raised the number of boxes to twenty five and ended up with thirteen nests and out are successful sometimes the eggs don't have or not all the young survive but we're still able who he still able to measure approximately thirty young birds came out so the fact that we had an increase in a number of nests box used between the years shows that these cavities d's nest sites are limited and so we expect that the number of swallows using this box will increase over time so somehow the word gets around among the swallow community that there's a place where they can go to nast's that wasn't there before yeah three swallows are up served fairly we'll even if they're not feeding them are likely to be obs and so while they're doing all this they're always on the lookout for nesting slow cations and there are a few nest box located but are tubs marsh proper and so the fact that we had a box on the west side of the marsh those birds probably nest in colonies sol they don't want to be too close to one another but they do prefer to nest in areas where the tree swallows are also nesting i suppose there is there is safety in numbers and more eyes to watch for predators so  boxes and the banding there anymore plans to expand this program yes so in twenty fifteen we're hoping to set up a small banding lab so so far for the last two years we've mostly been doing our field activities the tables set out under a tree and so in two thousand and fifteen we've been working with the city with ducks unlimited to erect a small banding and a very small structure for which we can keep our some of our equipment on program that may get an opportunity to get involved in this project as well other activities we have we will likely set up a few more nesting nest boxes and maybe looking to other types of nesting structures for other bird species and then continue monitoring activity which usually will take place from april all the way until october plants incorporate more university curriculum into it as well like maybe eight actual ornithology the course if you are research programs an aspect of this course so students will have an opportunity to learn directly hands on with birds in the hand then they capture method research methods that are used to understand and study bird populations so that we do integrate  the activities at better times march from banning project into course activities and sometimes incorporate into other courses that are offered either in the biology program or in the natural resource protection program case was going to be further involvement from students to you which is excellent what about just members of the public may be listening or of heard about is there any way they can become involved or is it want to keep it on more of a smaller scale yeah that's a great question and most most of these spending station are entirely run by volunteers it's one of the beauty of all this research can be done with relatively low small means and it's really based on the very large support from volunteers in our case it's been primarily student volunteers but we've also had members of the public who have been interested in participating in our activities and that can range from just participating in birth census so when we do counts of birds just like bird watching along a specific route or even just showing up at the site to count birds there's ways to share observations and that can range all the way to participating in the banding program and become trained over time in banding activities so so yeah there are opportunities for anyone interested who would like to to spend some time on the project and we always welcome anyone's interest and enthusiasm into a project how can they reach you yeah and if missed listeners are interested in finding out more about the project whether it is to just visit or to participate in bird census or to learn more about bird banding in general they can reach me directly and the best way is by email so eric dot ca ok so what if we do have this news outside and i'm alone as well or are you or any other programs and he said there wasn't a whole lot for banding on the coast but are there any other programs that people get involved yep so for people interested banding or in birds in general there are a number of programs that are available for bird banding if people are listeners or near to victoria area there is the rocky point bird observatory that observatory has been running for quite a few years and they run on they basically are entirely volunteer based and they run to bending station near him a chosen rocky point area and so for listeners interested you would go to rocky point birds observatory future searched out online you would find their web page on the lower mainland there is the vancouver avian research center who are actually partners for us and they run a bird banding station and cook with them and so they do also welcome people to visit but also who are interested in volunteering at the station and there's another outfit called iona island called the iowan island bird observatory which is located just near the international airport in vancouver and again all of these organization by searching online you can find web page for dare forty's organization and that's for banding but if people are interested in participating in bird programs that is birding program not necessarily involved in the c a nature store they run to bird walk each week one on tuesday and one on sundays and they go to local parks and areas and by getting on to their dare of communication systems you can then participate in those bird and they were point to everyone it's a great way to learn about it and there are other ways by which people can learn about birds as to and participate that is there are there is a program run by bird studies canada which is called feeder watch so even from your home if you have a few feeders warner or more feeders you can contribute to what is called citizen science by recording deciding of the birds that you see at your feeder and then supply them true and online portal t bird studies canada and they will use your data to better understand the bee dynamics of feeder birds and the last program that people can get involved with is a specific more to a time of year is the christmas christmas bird count takes place right around christmas and most places around north america and canada have some christmas bird count occurring in those neighborhoods and that's when people go around to a large area within an urban center and are looking for species and challenging whatever to come across and that's been a one very long running program that's very successful that's great and then i was just to ask i'm glad you mentioned the christmas bird count because this program should be airing actually on december twenty third for everyone so what is the actual date of the christmas bird count are we going to get this out in time this is great because the denial christmas bird count is on the summer twenty eight and so if anyone is interested in an animal christmas bird count basically it takes place around and imo it's a counselor coal that is approximately twenty or thirty kilometers in diameter so within that count circle anyone who count birds and usually are part of teams those that are used for the purpose and we'll just give you the information on how to find out more about that christmas bird count that's coming up on sunday december ca and we'll put that on the podcast of this program as well as the changes facebook page they are still looking for volunteers you don't have to have experience with this program or as a bird watcher a bird or all you need is some enthusiasm you can be an extra pair of eyes and ears and those who are experienced can kind of guide you along through the process and you might be able to help them to take some notes so do check that out another place where you can check is the backyard wild bird in nature store where i'm sure they will have the information as well another event that will mention well just something that's coming up r t and transit encourages everyone to make the safe and smart choice to use transit on new year's eve take advantage of free rides on a modified service schedule on december thirty first after eight thirty pm just be aware that there is a modification to the schedule over the holidays december twenty fourth is regular service until seven thirty no service on the twenty fifth sunday service on the twenty sixth modified service until eight thirty pm on the thirty first and then free new year's eve modified service after eight thirty pm and no service on january first you can find out more or just check that out i usually just google r d n bus and you can find and the information by following the links there now you are listening to c h l why want to one point seven f m in the imo heard as well at c h l y dot ca where we stream live and podcast the program that you're listening to on c h l why is changes today we have a pre recorded interview with professor eric demmer zofia you on bird banding an observation with some information on how we can help local wild birds to maintain healthy populations so here w myself and a few students from the you went around areas around parksville and so we managed in a day to see sixty eight species which was a little less than we expected but we got to see some some sightings that we did not expect so we managed to find some warblers and and borders are typically south of us usually in mexico or so distant of year so it was interesting to see two species in orange ground war are still presence in our county area but unfortunately in these counts sometimes we have difficulty finding even species we think are common so we could not find some of the woodpeckers that we would totally expect to find and even we could not find a great blue heron an entire day of searching even though those birds you would think are quite common but sometimes it just happens that they're not in the areas where we're searching for them but there are lots of different teams that are going out to research different areas within account circle and those teams were successful in finding so many species so it's not that they were not there it's just that we could not find them with our area is that significant terms of what's happening with the populations that they're moving around where you don't expect them to for example a small scale like where a group might be counting it's not unexpected that you will not find a species if or did it just for the period that we are looking we might miss some species the hope is that if you have multiple teams out in the field within the same day that all together of the teams some of them will find each be she's a bird it does become a concern when over time you do see a reduction in number because we count as well or you reach you see some species becoming very very difficult to find so those are the trends death over time these christmas bird count have become very useful to understand increasing or decreasing trends in population because this christmas bird count have been happening since one thousand nine hundred so basically this year is that one hundred fifteenth christmas bird count so and there's a lot of power of a lot of information calls as well for the purpose of counting whether we see or hear a bird is as long as we have evidence that the bird is present so whether we recognize its song or its call or we see that those are all valid observations sol and there are some species in the tory asli very difficult to see because they live in very dense habitat but if you hear it and then you're definitely certain and that's what it is ok i think i just heard a marsh wren and you were very definite marshman is what you heard because  were well acquainted with that species then that's an observation you don't have to necessarily see it and you don't have to try to disturb it to see it either so that's it's a sufficient sighting ok getting back to something we talked about earlier you trends or are causes or do you think this is an indication of something larger yeah there's definitely been a trend of unfortunately of decreasing overall of bird numbers and species of populations or some species are becoming harder to find and that's somewhat of concern there's a report that came out last year called the state of as published by bird studies canada and the canadian wildlife service basically mentions that there were all across north america all across canada there's been a decline in many species of birds since one thousand nine hundred seventy so going back all this time with a lot of data from banding from bird census from christmas bird count every possible data revealed that some species are declining now the story is not all negative there are some species that have done well for instance water fall have been increasing in some areas during that time and that's been primarily trued of strong efforts of groups that have been restoring wetlands and spending a lot of time trying to improve breeding sites by the same token species like raptors so some of you who may have observed over time that it's not that hard to see a bald eagle now but if you were here thirty years ago or forty years ago it would have been very difficult because raptors were quite decimated by pesticides like d d t where their population numbers really went down but they have been rebounding so so those are success stories but on the other hand if you look at the cumulative all the species together there are a lot of other species that are not doing as well and they are in decline the cause for these declines are always difficult to ascertain because you can think that a lot of these species don't just spent time in british columbia they spent time travelling true to us they may spend six or eight months of their life in south america or central america so the time that we see them here is really only a small fraction this there can be issues that occur while they're breeding so it may be up here and it could be shoes were never spending their time in the winter so maybe in central or south america there's changes in their habitat or changes in in their environment that caused them to maybe not survive same number or maybe during my maybe during countering more predators and so on and so there's a whole variety of possible causes and only true sustained research and monitoring can we try to see first try to understand what some of these causes might be for the clients and then once we know what the causes maybe we can try to do something about it and try to improve the conservation of these birds the one cause that i have heard about is i just read reports recently from the city of vancouver was saying there's an estimated three hundred fifty to three hundred million birds killed every year by cats both house cats and feral cats and some cities and municipalities have been passing stricter laws about keeping cats indoors and registering cats and things like that i just wondering if you have any thoughts on that if you've noticed anything like that do you think this would be effective in any way and it's the same study as come out and it is pretty staggering when reading these results that really identified mortality direct mortality of birds being mortality of bird due to cat is basically more than every other possible factors put together that is collision with cars collision with windows or other aspects and so it is pretty significant and one of the difficulty with cat populations is that we don't have a very good sense of what feral cat populations are now  the size of populations but i think if i think it needs to be said though because it is a it is a large number and it is something we may be seeing here in and i am one not just at better times it seems like that would be a pretty good habitat for some f to house cats could make the trek over there because there are some houses in there and i know i have even seen some cats on my way to the site a few times in the morning so there's definitely a direct link i'm just wondering if any of these measures you think would be effective or where the responsibility of the owner comes in maybe as well yeah i've had better times we haven't seen too many feral cats but we know when a feral cats are around they don't necessarily or more cats or of their cats don't usually try to show themselves and one of the thing they do is try to stay away from us sometimes i mean those programs the programs that have been advanced in some cities in canada and the us are i guess one step towards trying to understand what are the population of outdoor cats and sometimes deaths to population both of cats that are known feral that people let out but also the population of feral cat and those are the population for which we really don't have a good handle on the numbers and also these programs can be used as opportunities for education and really bring about the significance of our cats on bird populations ok well said is there any other steps people could take home owners property owners they could be beneficial to birds and help their populations rebound definitely the main the main aspects to try to what we each of us can do to try to help bird populations are basically to try to increase the suitable habitat for done and that can just be within your backyard to plant some plants that may be more native in nature  native vegetation birds might be willing more willing to to frequent or to make some dense habitat by clearing some shrubs that they can hide within putting some bird feeders so anything even a simple bird bath sometimes people are amazed by just putting a small bird bath how quickly birds come and spend time with in the bird bath and it's a great way and enjoyable way too to observe them and then the other aspect is to reduce threats so that  includes if you do observe a cat coming into your backyard and you don't you don't like to see them spending all this time predating on birds if you find a deer always hiding under a shrub there might be a way to try to modify doubts rob or to to make it less inviting for the cat to hide there also if you notice that bird sometimes strikes a window repeatedly done maybe just closing a blind or putting a small dekel or something in on the window or an on the inside might be just enough to break the reflection so that birds more flies so really it comes down to increasing the habitat available making it suitable and then decreasing the threats to whether it come from windows strikes or from predation event or so on  finish off with another positive how about just i know you've traveled with your birding as well internationally maybe just your favorite sighting you've seen or the best experience you've had with with burning so far yeah i mean as bird one of my main interest i actually travel to a variety of places in south america or even australia or europe to do in part to do some bird watching and i'd say there's lots of lots been lots of very interesting highlights but one of them is  every second year of the u we take a group of students on a field school to billy's and as part of that field school certainly and when you go into a tropical area birds become one main highlight instead they're so easy to see that they're available there to make lots of sound that prevent us from sleeping sometimes and so the large number of birds present there is really a great feature that we get to share with students and try to under stand some of the differences that we see in the tropical regions and we would would not necessarily see here in north america and so we've had lots of very interesting sightings dairy including some rare herons and and other species that occurred there and so one of my favorite group of birds are called mannequins and they're not very you know by most standards they're not the most flamboyant birds they are very colorful the male are very colorful but they do very interesting dances and when the male try to attract a female and so every time we're able to find some of these mannequins and to show to students what really these birds are trying to do and and what they're doing that's really great highlight of interest of interesting aspects of bird to call it really like to demonstrating i'm just curious to know if you see birds that might be from here when you go there because they've migrated down there and also whether you have any partnerships with groups down there to help with the habitat when they are on the southern end of their migration routes because you were mentioning earlier that some of the problems with the populations might be happening in places other than here so could you perhaps talk about maybe the potential for a whole networks maybe of people helping the birds all along their migration ro and especially when they're at the southern end where they may stay for some time yeah so there are quite a few bending station in north america and there are also some in central and south america not near it not nearly as many as in north america but there are a variety of network of collaboration been established especially along the flyways so in our case the pacific flyaway there's been a lot of international organization and also of partnerships that have been developed to try to address some of these concerns yeah sometimes in our travels in central or south america we certainly do see some of the species that breed in the summer it all depends on the time of year that we visit if we visit central or south america in the fall winter or spring we tend to see species that are that would otherwise be in canada or in the u s during the summer so one of the species that i've seen that is the most and one of the most common species i've seen in january in ecuador is a species called the swainson's thrush which breeds in the boreal forest of canada and so sometimes you go to the tropics expecting to see bird species from the tropic and those species that is the most common turns out to be warned you can see commonly in north america during the summer but that just happens to be where to spend the winter so it's always interesting to see and to recognize and to appreciate that these birds are spending a lot of time their life somewhere else than where we're accustomed to see them ok i know you mentioned seeing the mannequin bullies and i remember seeing them as well on a walk and i remember being a really cool experience so explicit dances or sing and make sounds in the purpose of attracting females to mate and link that which they'll go for quite astounding for such a small bird so in some of the species within that group of birds some birds do really elaborate dance and will jump from perch to perch back and forth nonstop and make all sorts of clicks and sounds meanwhile just to try to attract a female and hopefully be able to reproduce with that female in some other species there's one called the club wing mannequin evolutionary time has developed different ways feathers structures and so it actually bangs its wings together to make a really high pitched sound and that's what it used to attract it's males so these birds are just fascinating when do you jump from perch to perch doing really weird things and some under some other species bilby to rio for males and they all fight for a female but the fighting is done by doing by dancing so every single bird will be dancing in a various pattern and it's basically the winner gets to spend more time with the female so they're really fascinating birds and we do have some birds in north america to do some interesting things but by comparison when you go to the tropics there are so many species that do things that we just haven't seen morning and then go out for an afternoon walk and then see them right there in front of you just like the branch hopping dance that you just described so maybe we'll leave it there on that note thank you so much for coming in eric that was an excellent discussion and i hope we generated some interest amongst people in both the banding program and the other birding programs around and also just conserving and protecting the birds we have here so thank you very much you're welcome travis and happy birding to everyone out there and that was barrington talking with professor eric demarest from vi you and that's our show once again information on helping with the christmas bird count will be on our podcast and also on the changes face page and now our production team wishes you a very happy holiday season