The Page

International Literacy Day came and went last month. Thanks to the local promotional efforts of Martha Simpson of the Community Reading Project, Slave Lake “smoked Fox Creek, Hinton and Drayton Valley (which included Breton, Tomahawk and Entwistle),” in the reading minutes challenge.
Readers registered their minutes of reading on that day, coming up with a total of 58,986 minutes. Breaking it down, C.J. Schurter School retained its title for the readingest school, with 22,818 minutes. The local AADAC office won the title for the ‘organization’ that read the most. The Campbell family of Slave Lake had the most minutes of any participating family. Mr. Snedden’s Grade 6 class at E.G. Wahlstrom School had the most minutes of any class, with 1,837.
Further afield, Marlene Saunders’ students at the Peavine Northern Lakes College campus beat out other NLC campuses with a total of 4,211 minutes. Cathy Bittman won the individual reading minutes title with 360 minutes, meaning that she read for six hours on the day in question!
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Yes, that was Kathie Millett whispering on the phone last week. Kathie got back from a few days of freshwater clam-digging on the Chinchaga River with the worst case of laryngitis we’ve ever seen. It’s not the easiest affliction for a salesperson to deal with, but Kathie soldiered on in spite of it.
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Yes, that new fellow around town who says he’s a Lakeside Leader reporter really is working as a reporter for us - for the next few weeks at least. Doug Beattie lives in Smith and is doing an eight-week work experience placement - a requirement of his media and marketing design course at Keyin College in Gander, Newfoundland.
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We ran out of room on the regular pages for the Richard Krikun’s Lesser Slave Lake Bird Observatory banding report this week, but we had this gaping hole to fill, so here it is.
The 2005 banding season is fast approaching its end. The signs of the end of fall migration monitoring are all around: cool morning temperatures, leaves falling from the trees (many of them landing in the nets - one of the major draw-backs to fall banding), and low species diversity.
Banding did continue this week, although heavy winds forced the nets closed for the first two days. Weather conditions improved mid-week and netting efforts produced 20 banded birds. The majority of the captures were black-capped chickadees and dark-eyed juncos. Hermit thrushes, ruby-crowned kinglets, orange-crowed warblers and myrtle warblers were a few late migrant songbirds both captured and seen around the banding lab.
These four species are some of the first to arrive during spring migration, usually mid to late April. It is interesting that they are also the last to migrate through the area during fall migration. The breeding range of these species does extend north into the Northwest Territories, but many individuals breed around Lesser Slave Lake.
The first to arrive in spring and the last to leave in the fall may mean that these species have longer time requirements for their breeding ecology. Other explanations may be that the birds seen this week are individuals moving from the northern reaches of their ranges and need more time for migration, or they are individuals just not in any rush to commence with migration.
Any one of these reasons is quite valid; there was a pair of white-throated sparrows that were banded during breeding season still milling around the banding lab this week. They found a nice berry patch and are not ready to fly south yet.
This week saw two new species banded for 2005: a boreal chickadee and a pair of pine siskins. Large flocks of pine siskins are seen flying around in circles over the banding station daily, but they remain quite high, so it is quite uncommon to catch any.
Northern saw-whet owl monitoring continued this week. It was a great week with 28 saw-whets banded. The busiest night was the 22nd when a thunder storm moved in from the north. Nets were set for just over an hour and 10 saw-whets were captured during that time. They must have been trying to outrun the storm.
There were still owls out around the nets giving distress calls when the rain began and forced the nets closed. 10 owls banded in a night is a personal best for myself. Other bird species and wildlife made their presence known during owl banding this week.