MULTISAR

Male lark buntings are one of the prairie's most striking songbirds. Their black bodies and white wing patches stick out amongst the more muted colours of the grasslands. Males have an impressive flight display, flying high above the prairie, before descending gently while delivering their bubbly, musical song. Female lark buntings lack the bold colours of the male so they can blend into the prairie grasses while nesting. In Alberta, lark buntings are typically found in native grasslands with an abundance of sagebrush. Unfortunately, as our native grasslands disappear, so too do our lark buntings which are currently listed as Threatened in Canada. When managed well, cattle grazing can help maintain the grassland habitat that lark buntings need to nest and thrive.

Our crew was out this past weekend with Alberta Environment bios (another story coming soon!) - and a few of our captures included young bats from this year! The young bats are taking their first flights! We noticed a little later in the night, there were some wild flights going on around another grouping of bat boxes - which were almost certainly little bats practicing their new flight skills! We always give a heads up to everyone when this happens. You might find bats on the ground or on the sides of buildings - these aren't sick bats but rather young ones that have just run out of gas! Or crashed! Please never handle with bare hands. Carefully - you can move these guys to either a bat house, or a tree, or use the "Pillowcase method" (put the bat in an open pillowcase and hang that in a tree - which gives the bats safe cover and they can leave later on their own) - or if there seems to be an injury - you can go to our albertabats.ca/foundabat page and contact your closest wildlife rehabilitator (we have a list that takes bats in Alberta). See https://batworld.org/local-rescue/ for a map for most of North America to find a rescuer.

Today is Day 1 of the Southern Alberta Grazing School for Women in Twin Butte! Some great presentations in the classroom today on grazing principles and practices, herd health and liver flukes, and large carnivore livestock co-existence and mitigation. We're also spending time in the field learning about range health and identifying plants!