The 2012 fall migration banding season at the Kiawah Island Banding Station (KIBS) is complete! Nets were opened for a total of 98 days (out of a possible 108) from August 15 - November 30th. We lost 5 consecutive days due to high winds and rain from Hurricane Sandy (October 27-31) with the other 5 scattered across the season.
We banded 4,725 new birds and had 885 recaptures of 89 different species. The most commonly banded species were Common Yellowthroats (1339), Yellow-rumped Warbler (1060), and Gray Catbird (610). Those three species combined made up 64% of all the birds banded this season!
We banded 18 species never before banded at KIBS: Virginia Rail, Philadelphia Vireo, Tree Swallow, Red-breasted Nuthatch, Brown Creeper, Winter Wren, Nashville Warbler, Swainson's Warbler, Louisiana Waterthrush, Kentucky Warbler, Wilson's Warbler, Canada Warbler, Chipping Sparrow, Clay-colored Sparrow, Vesper Sparrow, Nelson's Sparrow, White-crowned Sparrow, and Dark-eyed Junco.
We increased our effort three-fold from 2409.8 net-hours in 2011 to 7220.6 net-hours this year. This increase in effort was a result of two factors: (1) we increased the number nets we used from 12 to 17, and (2) we banded every day (weather depending).
We also had lots of returning birds that were banded in previous seasons. It will take a little while to sort through all those records to determine exactly how many unique returns we actually had as I suspect there will be several that were captured more than one time during the fall.
The following is a photographic recap of some of the highlights from this season:
Virginia Rail |
Chuck-Will's-Widow |
Philadelphia Vireo |
Bell's Vireo |
Red-breasted Nuthatch |
Brown Creeper |
Winter Wren |
Chestnut-sided Warbler |
Swainson's Warbler |
Louisiana Waterthrush (very late bird banded on September 1, 2012) |
Kentucky Warbler |
Wilson's Warbler |
Canada Warbler |
Chipping Sparrow |
Clay-colored Sparrow |
Vesper Sparrow |
Nelson's Sparrow |
White-crowned Sparrow |
Dark-eyed Junco |
Excellent post on an impressive banding season! Kudos to you and your team on a job well-done! And thank you for sharing it all with us!
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