Daily banding can be a grind, whether you’re engrossed in it or not. Don’t get me wrong, the best time of the day is the quiet before sunrise, opening the nets and listening to the birds starting to wake up to start their day. But there are days when accomplishing the necessary banding chores – net rounds, processing, more net rounds, processing, even more net rounds…- can tire you out. So it was great this morning when Faye arrived and took over the banding/processing part of this equation! My job was to simply walk around extracting birds from nets with every net holding a potential surprise or surprises. And that was my morning. Like a day off.
It was another busy morning with sparrows bouncing in and out of the prairie grass or between it and the edge habitat. It’s VERY difficult to get an accurate count of their numbers as you see one for just a brief moment before it disappears – and they’re spread over 7 acres of grasses. When I enter my Song and Swamp Sparrow numbers into Ebird it gets “flagged” for an explanation. What can I say? The number I’m giving is just an estimate and a very low one at that.
Banded 69:
1 Swainson’s Thrush
2 American Goldfinches
1 Field Sparrow
3 Eastern White-crowned Sparrows
17 White-throated Sparrows
11 Song Sparrows
15 Swamp Sparrows
6 Red-winged Blackbirds
13 Myrtle Warblers
Rick