It’s been a tough, frustrating month at the Farm, plagued not only with personnel shortages but also with terrible weather. Even on days with good coverage we were often hit with rain, wind, and cold temperatures. The trees and shrubs have been late to bud out and this is an important factor in bringing migrating birds to the site.
We banded only 170 birds – the 2nd lowest April total going back to 2021. This total was made up of 26 species. Very telling was the measure of the flow of birds through the site: # of birds per 100 net hours. A “net hour” is a single 12-meter net open for 1 hour. As we run 10 nets, their being open for an hour would be 10 net hours and if we keep them open for 5 hours that would be 50 hours. We divide the number of birds banded by the number of net hours and then multiply that number by 100. When there are lots of birds around this rate can be high; when, like this month, there aren’t many passing through, the rate is low. We’ve been operating at the Farm for 6 years now and this April’s rate of 26.8 birds per 100 net hours is the second lowest. Interestingly, the lowest April was last year when we did only 22.6 birds per 100 net hours. However, we banded 257 birds, 87 more than this April. How can this be? Well, last year we were operating on 23 days vs this year’s 17 and we managed 762 net hours vs this year’s 556. Many times this year we didn’t open nets due to conditions or closed nets early as conditions deteriorated. So, all in all it has been a tough month. Hopefully, May will be better….
Here’s some photos from the past few days:
April’s Top 5:
1/ American Goldfinch – 28
2/ Red-winged Blackbird – 27
3/ American Tree Sparrow – 18
4/ Swamp Sparrow – 15
5/ Song Sparrow – 13
Rick