All good things must come to an end (as my grandmother, who was a font of folk wisdom, used to assure me). Today we started to dismantle the banding operation. We took down nets 4, 5, 6, 6A, 7, and 10. We’ll leave the 3 feeder nets (1, 1A, 2) up for the Winter and nets 8, 8X, 8R, and 9 up until Nancy figures the owl-catching season is finished. It was a wonderful day to wind down – great weather (sunny and appropriately cool) and a great crew of volunteers (Faye, Nancy, Christine, Chris, Oli Love, Liz Vanderwoude, and Eric Bauer). Many hands make light work (my grandmother again) and this was certainly true this morning. We had everything wrapped up by about noon AND we still managed to process 82 birds (46 banded, 36 retraps). We had an interesting sighting as well: a Northern Mockingbird. Although these birds are commonly seen in the area we rarely see them around the banding lab; in fact, this was the first sighting here for the year.
72% of the birds banded/retrapped today were from feeder nets or baited traps. Slow going around the rest of the nets.

Banded 46:
1 Downy Woodpecker
1 Black-capped Chickadee
1 Myrtle Warbler
10 American Tree Sparrows
1 Fox Sparrow
1 Song Sparrow
2 White-throated Sparrows
8 Dark-eyed Juncos
3 House Finches
18 American Goldfinches

Retrapped 36:
1 Hairy Woodpecker
3 Black-capped Chickadees
2 White-breasted Nuthatches
1 Golden-crowned Kinglet
2 Northern Cardinals
3 American Tree Sparrows
3 White-throated Sparrows
19 Dark-eyed Juncos
1 American Goldfinch

ET’s: 39 spp.

Rick