What do you think of when you hear the number 99? Why Wayne Gretzky of course, the Great One! Unless of course you’re tallying things up at the Ruthven banding lab in which case you think: rats! One more bird and we would have had 100 and a Big Day. And so it was at Ruthven today. Here’s Sir Sanford Fleming’s Xavier Tuson’s take on the day:

After a semi-slow day yesterday, the weather finally cooperated and brought with it clear skies (as in no precipitation, finally..), cool temperatures, and most importantly, birds! Compared to our previous best count of 68 banded, we had a total of 99 birds banded today (21 species overall, with only 11 recaptures!) making it a new record for this season.

As part of our effort to breed the next generation of ornithologists, we even had the pleasure of teaching some school children the intricacies of bird banding and bird watching. What a treat it is to see enthusiasm coming from such a young crowd. Hopefully we instilled a seed of curiosity in them that will one day bring them back to become volunteers themselves!

Banded 99:
1 Red-bellied Woodpecker
1 Black-capped Chickadee

1 Red-breasted Nuthatch
1 Brown Creeper
2 Golden-crowned Kinglets
18 Ruby-crowned Kinglets
2 Swainson’s Thrush
20 Cedar Waxwings
1 Tennessee Warbler
2 Orange-crowned Warbler
15 Myrtle Warblers

1 Western Palm Warbler
1 Chipping Sparrow

1 Fox Sparrow
3 Song Sparrows
1 Swamp Sparrow
9 White-throated Sparrows

4 White-crowned Sparrows
13 Slate-colored Juncos
1 Brown-headed Cowbird
1 American Goldfinch

ET’s: 51 spp.
Xavier

And at Lowville Park Banding Station, Ben Oldfield was having a pretty good day too. Here’s his take on it:
The morning started off with lots of White throated sparrows chipping, augurs well for a good day. In this case 75% of the birds were captured on the first round! Banded a total of 32 birds in 4 hours.
HETH-1
GCTH-1
GRCA-1
RCKI-4
MYWA-3
BCCH-3(irruption?)
WTSP-8
SOSP-4
AMGO-7
Ben