October 1st – Orion’s Dictum

Orion the Hunter was high overhead punctuating the crystal clear skies. Orion, in a Puckish way, is a bit of a trickster. This morning, seeing me work my way around the nets, he ordered the migrating sparrows to drop into the river flats and, at first light, throw themselves into the nets. And so they did……We had very big first round and ended up banding 27 White-throated Sparrows, most of which were caught in the new #8 nets….”my nets” as opposed to “Nancy’s net” (1A). I’m not competitive but I would like to point out that my nets accounted for over 25% of the birds caught today (22 of 80) while Nancy’s caught exactly 0. (But sometimes it just goes like that……).

But after the first big push things dropped off dramatically and by 11:30 there didn’t seem to be any birds around so we closed giving me a chance to get out for a sail.

Banded 66:
1 Black-capped Chickadee
17 Golden-crowned Kinglets
3 Ruby-crowned Kinglets
1 Gray Catbird
1 Red-eyed Vireo
2 Nashville Warblers
1 Western Palm Warbler (1st for the season)
1 Blackpoll Warbler
1 Chipping Sparrow
6 Song Sparrows
2 Swamp Sparrows
27 White-throated Sparrows
1 Eastern White-crowned Sparrow
2 Dark-eyed Juncos

Retrapped 14:
1 Brown Creeper
1 House Wren
1 Golden-crowned Kinglet
1 Ruby-crowned Kinglet
1 Hermit Thrush
1 Gray Catbird
1 Blackpoll Warbler
2 Chipping Sparrows
1 Song Sparrow
2 White-throated Sparrows

ET’s: 42 spp.

Rick

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