The face of the new banding factory.
We entered a new era today: factory banding. We have been running two banding ‘stations’ within the lab, one for new bands and one for retraps but we decided to use both stations for banding. We felt that this would streamline the whole operation as we’d been noticing that with just one banding area we were getting a LOT of congestion. Further, this setup would allow us to teach at one station while the other would continue to stream through the birds so there wouldn’t be much of a slowdown (as there is now when teaching).
We picked a great day to do this on as we were almost swamped with American Goldfinches and Myrtle Warblers banding 80 and 55 respectively and a total of 208 altogether, a new high total for the year.
Now this will only work if there are two experienced banders and two scribes. But today we had Matt and myself to band and Nancy (who could have banded) and Carol scribing. So everything went VERY smoothly. We were even able to accomodate a class of 18 Brantfor grade 8 students and expose them to banding without getting behind.
The weather really co-operated today to bring the birds in: scattered showers during the night but stopping just before opening time and then cloudy skies throughout the morning bringing the birds down.
Banded 208:
1 Mourning Dove
1 Blue Jay
1 Black-capped Chickadee
1 Red-breasted Nuthatch
2 Brown Creepers
4 Golden-crowned Kinglets
10 Ruby-crowned Kinglets
1 Gray-cheeked thrush
3 Swainson’s Thrushes
1 Hermit Thrush
2 Gray Catbirds
4 Cedar Waxwings
1 Tennessee Warbler
2 Nashville Warblers
55 Myrtle Warblers
4 Blackpoll Warblers
1 American Redstart
3 Chipping Sparrows
4 Song Sparrows
23 White-throated Sparrows
3 Dark-eyed Juncos
1 Purple Finch
80 American Goldfinches
Retrapped 50:
2 Blue Jays
3 Black-capped Chickadees
2 Red-breasted Nuthatches
3 Ruby-crowned Kinglets
1 Eastern Bluebird
4 Hermit Thrushes
1 Gray Catbird
1 Nashville Warbler
2 Myrtle Warblers
4 Blackpoll Warblers
1 Common Yellowthroat
1 Chipping Sparrow
2 Field Sparrows
6 Song Sparrows
1 Lincoln’s Sparrow
6 White-throated Sparrows
1 Eastern White-crowned Sparrow
1 Purple Finch
8 American Goldfinches
ET’s: 53 spp (including the 1st American Pipit of the year)
Fall Banding Total: 2,274
Year-to-Date Banding Total: 4,859
More photos from the Bird Festival:
The Purple Martin Group meets the Bluebird Group (Bill Read) and the Cowbird Group (David Swan)
Birds are for all ages.
The Raptor Show
Natalie leading Headless Pizza Guy
Hanging out between speakers.
SAR Co-ordinator Sandy Turner and Dianne Green looking for muscles, er, mussels.
The Raptor Show
The many faces of Ruthven - Janet and Caitlin.
Mark Peck and Rhiannon
Rick