It was cold/cool overnight and clear with a waning moon casting lots of light. I think the short-distance migrants have decided, “OK, it’s chilling down, let’s head for Texas or Maryland or…somewhere south of here that’s warmer.” There was lots of activity/’chipping’ along the edges when Nancy Furber and I were opening.

Just as we started out on our first round, Loretta joined us – a good thing too because it was huge – we used up almost all the bird bags clearing the nets. And then for the next 2 hours it was like a machine (a finely-tuned machine I might add): I banded, Nancy scribed, and Loretta continued to do net rounds (and squeezed in a census). This worked extremely well as we ended up banding 106 birds for the day very quickly and efficiently.

Interestingly, very little of that banding total was comprised of American Goldfinches (only 6). In fact, the most numerous species was White-throated Sparrow – we banded 38. In keeping with this, usually Net #2 by one of the feeder clusters catches the highest number of birds on any day (mostly American Goldfinches) but today caught only 3. Net #9 was high with 35.

Around mid-morning, the wind picked up out of the SW and moved in some cloud cover. The nets went quiet. It was remarkable. Where did all the birds go!?

Banded 106:
2 Eastern Tufted Titmice
2 Black-capped Chickadees
6 Golden-crowned Kinglets
9 Ruby-crowned Kinglets
2 Eastern Bluebirds
3 Hermit Thrushes
2 Nashville Warblers
2 Orange-crowned Warblers
18 Yellow-rumped Warblers
1 American Redstarts
1 Chipping Sparrow
8 Song Sparrows
2 Lincoln’s Sparrow
38 White-throated Sparrows
3 Eastern White-crowned Sparrows
1 Dark-eyed Junco
6 American Goldfinches

Retrapped 13:
5 Black-capped Chickadees
3 White-breasted Nuthatches
1 Ruby-crowned Kinglet
1 Eastern Bluebird
1 Gray Catbird
1 White-throated Sparrow
1 American Goldfinch

ET’s: 38 spp.

Rick