Thursday, September 23: A Day of Variety and Firsts

Some mornings the banding lab can be a very busy, active learning centre for both young and old. After a successful ‘Ruthven’s for the Birds’ – 1st annual festival’ on the weekend and yesterday, with two school groups filling up the space in the lab, it was nice to have a quieter morning.
Nets were opened this morning with a full moon lighting the net lanes, with a bit of ground fog swirling around and my fingers feeling a little cold. I was wondering if it was going to be a bit slower this morning for birds captured with the clear skies and warmer temperatures forecasted. I guess the operative word is ‘ slower’. The first net round was busy with numerous birds in each net, and then, thereafter, the birds tapered off to a slow trickle through the morning. Even though the pace of banding was a little slower we still finished the day with a total of 65 birds banded. This brings our fall total to 1, 260 birds banded. New species encountered for the season included a Common Loon, Winter Wren, Lincoln Sparrow, and Eastern White-crowned Sparrow.

65 Banded
2 Mourning Dove
2 Blue Jay
1 Brown Creeper
3 House Wren
1 Winter Wren
2 Ruby-crowned Kinglet
1 Gray-cheeked Thrush
6 Swainson’s Thrush
3 Gray Catbird
1 Red-eyed Vireo
2 Nashville Warbler
1 Magnolia Warbler
2 Black-throated Blue Warbler
1 ‘Myrtle’ Warbler
11 Blackpoll Warbler
1 Common Yellowthroat
1 Scarlet Tanager
1 Chipping Sparrow
3 Song Sparrow
1 Lincoln’s Sparrow
2 Swamp Sparrow
4 White-throated Sparrow
1 White-crowned Sparrow
12 American Goldfinch

11 Retrap
2 Black-capped Chickadee
1 Brown Creeper
1 Nashville Warbler
3 White-throated Sparrow
1 Purple Finch
1 House Finch
2 American Goldfinch

ET’s: 48 species
Nancy

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