MOUNTAIN VIEW COUNTY — Olds resident Dick Stauffer has been busy catching migrants.
However, these ones are tiny; not much larger than a sparrow.
They breed in the Arctic then migrate from there to southern and central Alberta, even into Montana and back north in the spring.
They’re snow buntings. Little brown, white and black birds.
Stauffer, a resident of Olds and his friend Jim, a fellow bird enthusiast from Calgary, are part of a cross-Canada effort to learn more about these hardy birds; their health, their population and where they go.
Canadian Snow Bunting Network (CSBN) co-chair Rick Ludkin says Christmas bird counts indicated that snow bunting numbers had gone down by over 60 per cent at least in Ontario so the CSBN was set up to catch them across Canada to find out where they're going.
Stauffer and his buddy began this year's study in January at a site west of Didsbury where hundreds of them tend to settle, looking for food and shelter.
He believes about six people in Alberta are trying to band snow buntings.
As far as he knows, he and Jim are the first ones that have caught any.
By the middle of February, he believes they’d caught about 50 and he was hopeful they’d catch at least another 50.
Stauffer and Jim tend to take turns on different days trying to catch the birds and put bands on them to track their movements.
Every third or fourth bird undergoes a closer examination; weight fat ratio and wingspan to determine sex, age and health.
They won’t have long to do that.
Stauffer anticipates the flocks will start heading back to the Arctic in about early March.
“As soon as it warms up, these birds will disappear somewhere else. They basically only want to take on enough food so that they can survive the cold weather. They don't do very well in warm weather,” he said.
“It'll be somewhat weather dependent, but the males will leave here first and go back and stake out a territory, and then the females head up there,” he said.
“A fellow bander in the Yukon catches them about the middle of March up there. Mostly females is what she catches.”
Stauffer says the snow buntings are attracted to the Didsbury-area site for one main thing: food. Specifically seeds and grain.
“A lot at the particular site that we're at, they're feeding where the cattle have been fed,” he said.
And they don’t care where that food has been.
“They generally dig around for grain that's left over and they will flip through the manure and eat the seeds that haven't been digested fully.”
Stauffer was asked if they’re food for many predators. He said that’s one reason they fly in big flocks.
“This year, I've seen flocks from10 to 20, up to 1,000,” Stauffer said during an interview with the Albertan.
“If you've ever driven around the countryside, you'll see a bunch of birds fly up from the ditch or off the road. Those are more than likely snow buntings.
“There’s safety in numbers.”
Luckily also, there aren’t many predators around at this time of year. A couple of different species of hawks, but that’s about it.
Stauffer said one day when he was at the site, a Merlin, a kind of hawk, “flew out of the trees and spooked them and they all left.”
Snow buntings also protect themselves by sheltering in, ah, not the nicest of locations.
“They go on the leeward side of a pile of cow manure, bury themselves in the snow, and that's where they spend the night,” he said.
They’re not easy to catch.
“This is my third year trying to catch them. This is the first time I've caught any,” Stauffer said.
“They're highly nomadic. They'll be in one spot one day and then gone and they might not come back to that same spot for two or three or four days.”
Stauffer tries to lure the birds into a two-foot-by-three foot by eight-inch-high walk-in trap with food like cracked corn, cracked wheat, oats and rolled barley.
“I have pictures of where there's like a couple of hundred around the trap, but the odd one or two or three or four will wander into the trap and we put a band on them.
“There was nobody banding (them) in Alberta ‘till we took up the challenge a couple of years ago.
“From 1960 to 2024 there was a total of 12 snow buntings banded in Alberta and probably 10 (thousand) or 15,000 banded in Ontario.”
When a bird is caught, it is taken into Stauffer’s truck for handling and banding. Because of the birds’ aversion to warmth, that’s all done with the truck’s heater off and the windows rolled down.
“The other day I was out, it was -31 and that is pretty chilly on the hands when you're trying to band and handle (them),” he said.
The snow buntings put on a lot of weight for their flight up north.
Stauffer said generally when he catches them, their normal weight is about 35 grams. When they’ve been caught during their migration, they can weigh as much as 70 grams, double that weight.
“That's like you and I, yeah, doubling our weight just to go on holidays,” he said.
He noted that most of the snow buntings banded in Ontario go to Greenland.
“They’ve got a – whatever – a three (hundred) or four (hundred) or 500-mile flight across the water, and there's no stopping. So they would lose all that weight. They store it up for the energy, and then it's all gone.
“Birds have the ability to take food and turn it into fat real quick. And vice versa, take fat and turn it into energy real quick.”
Stauffer admitted that the snow buntings aren’t very happy about being caught, banded and studied.
“Not that it hurts, but snow buntings want to chew your finger off, kind of thing. They're not strong enough to cause any damage, unlike some of the other birds that I've handled.
He’s also dealt with mountain blue birds and tree swallows and horned larks.
“What can I tell you? After you’ve handled enough of them, it's kind of old hat.”
Stauffer keeps himself warm by wearing a lot of layers and electric gloves, which he takes off while handling the birds then quickly puts back on again.
“The other thing I've noticed is how long you can stay in the cold weather is directly late related to your toes. So maybe next year I'll have electric socks. I'm not sure,” he said.
With all this effort, you might assume Stauffer has a background as a wildlife biologist or something of that sort.
Not in the least.
“I was a mechanic,” he said. (I’m) an enthusiast. I kind of like the challenge.”
