You know about investment bubbles bursting, folks losing their savings, all their hard work. So it’s nice when you hear about investments paying off, even paying big dividends. And so it was today. Three young people, who have been coming to the banding station for several years – in Ben’s case, over 8 years – arrived to “run the show”. And they did. I had set up several nets earlier but they set up all but one of those left to go and they did the net rounds and most of the banding. There wasn’t much for me to do other than “supervise”, eat Alessandra’s muffins (you can’t have a banding season without baked goods!!), and brush out a couple of the lanes with the weed whacker. Great!
We had a half decent morning for this time of year. We caught and banded 28 birds – a mix of local adults and their progeny. The adults were moulting – complete moults – while the juveniles were checking out the site, learning how to get by.
We did not encounter any long-distance migrants that would have bred in the north.
We had an interesting Gray Catbird capture. It’s brown eye and light coloured mouth would suggest that it was a juvenile but it was going through a complete moult (flight and tail feathers) and still had the remains of a cloacal protuberance – so it was a male. Odd for this time of year when the eye should have been deep maroon and the mouth black – likely a bird in its second year.
Banded 28:
2 Downy Woodpeckers
1 Traill’s Flycatcher
1 Eastern Phoebe
2 Blue Jays
2 Black-capped Chickadees
3 House Wrens
1 American Robin
2 Gray Catbirds
3 Cedar Waxwings
1 Ovenbird
2 Common Yellowthroats
1 Northern Cardinal
1 Rose-breasted Grosbeak
3 Song Sparrows
1 Baltimore Oriole
2 American Goldfinches
ET’s: 42 spp.
Rick