I knew what was coming – you could see the clouds overhead and the approaching rain on the weather station radar – so I opened only a few of the nets, so that when it came I could close them quickly. It started lightly about an hour after opening but quickly changed to teeming down within 10 minutes, at which time I was really glad I had opened only a few nets…..Too bad, as there were birds around. Still, this was the first day in over 2 weeks that netting was restricted, which partially explains our exceptional banding numbers so far.
For the rest of the morning, I started the onerous task of entering this year’s banding data into the database provided by the banding office. This is NOT a user friendly program and I loathe the process although I recognize the necessity – in the past few years I’ve put it off to the Christmas Holidays but not this year……I managed to get 200 birds entered; only about 2500 more to go!
In the afternoon I helped put up the enormous tents that will house elements of the Bird Festival this weekend. This event is going to be both fun and interesting!

Banded 15:
1 Eastern Wood Pewee
1 Blue Jay
4 Swainson’s Thrushes
3 Gray Catbirds
1 Blackpoll Warbler
1 Common Yellowthroat
1 Northern Cardinal
1 Song Sparrow
1 White-throated Sparrow
1 Dark-eyed Junco

Retrapped 5:
1 House Wren
2 Swainson’s Thrushes
1 Magnolia Warbler
1 Black & White Warbler

ET’s: 31 spp.

Rick

Here is a picture of a Hatch-year Black-billed Cuckoo from September 13th, contributed by Gord Armstrong.

Black-billed Cuckoo