The prairie grass meadow was alive this morning. Many birds could be seen skimming over the seed heads before dropping down to find a good place to feed. And then, after a good feed, they would head to the “edge” – the vegetation bordering the pond and separating it from the meadow – to rest and digest in a somewhat safer environment where they wouldn’t be quite so exposed. We’ve learned over the past couple of years that setting nets along this edge to intercept these birds would be very productive. And today they certainly were: we banded 82 new birds and handled 29 “retraps” – birds banded earlier – for a total of 111. It was a busy morning!
We’ve always had a philosophy that part of our mandate should be to expose interested people to a bird in the hand and bird banding and offer training to those that want to pursue it. This paid off this morning as Annika and Destiny, who have been honing their skills for a while now, did a great job extracting and banding. Also, two Mac students – Adelaide and Julianna – that were here last week, wanted to get more experience and with our support they moved forward by leaps and bounds (figuratively speaking). By the end of the season they could be true assets.
We’re moving into the prime banding season here at the Farm. Our specialty is sparrows and although we’ve been catching good numbers of them, today we got a bumper crop – and this should continue for the next 2-3 weeks. It will be exciting!
Banded 82:
1 Mourning Dove
1 Marsh Wren
1 Gray Catbird
1 Hermit Thrush
3 American Goldfinches
5 Savannah Sparrows
3 Eastern White-crowned Sparrows
7 White-throated Sparrows
17 Song Sparrows
1 Lincoln’s Sparrow
26 Swamp Sparrows
5 Red-winged Blackbirds
1 Brown-headed Cowbirds
1 Tennessee Warbler
6 Myrtle Warblers
3 Indigo Buntings
Rick