Given the big push of birds on Sunday, I was curious to see what would be around this morning… so, I played a bit of Russian Roulette and opened my nets to try a couple rounds before leaving for work.  It was a great morning to try, but boy was I happy/not happy when 5 birds hit my last net at 7:55am!  In the end it was a great couple of rounds and I may try again another morning, but will make sure I start closing my nets by 7:30…

Photos from the day made for some great discussion with my Grade 1’s later that morning.  We talked about the photos of birds, noticing different things about them (bill, eye colour, striping or spots on the breast, colour of the feet (yellow for the palm warbler) overall size) and listening to a few of their songs.  Hopefully they’ll walk away from Grade 1 not only knowing the academics, like reading and writing, but also more aware of the world around them in their own backyards and in the green space that makes up so much of Hamilton.

Banded:

1 – American Goldfinch
1 – Ruby-crowned Kinglet
1 – Chipping Sparrow
1 – Field Sparrow
1 – Western Palm Warbler!!!
1 – Red-breasted Nuthatch (these will sometimes stay the summer here, so I’m carefully monitoring for a CP/BP to see if they’ll be staying around this year.  A great bird for the Breeding Bird Atlas).
1 – Swamp Sparrow
2 – White-throated sparrows
1 – Song Sparrow
1 – European Starling (you could see the egg about to come out!)

Recaps:

1 – Slate-coloured Junco
1 – American Robin
1 – Red-breasted Nuthatch

Total: 14 ( 11 Banded, 3 Recaps)

Field Sparrow – we had fun listening to the ‘pingpong ball’ sound of their song in class this morning.

Western Palm Warbler – great view of the back and tail feathers. To me the tail feathers looked very rounded and fresh, indicators of an older bird.

Western Palm Warbler – nice view of the yellow feet. We zoomed in to look at these in class and my students were quite surprised to see the bright yellow colour.