Sunday, November 17, 2013

Yellow-rumps, Yellow-rumps, Yellow-rumps

Eighteen birds captured on the first net round made Mattie and I think that we may be in for a good morning.  Well . . . the 2nd net round yielded only 2 birds and the 3rd only one.  But, we ended up the day with 32 new birds and 8 recaptures of 7 different species.  Of the 32 new birds banded 31 of them were Yellow-rumped Warblers.  Yellow-rumps will be the majority for the remainder of the season. 

Last year I did a post on how we age and sex Yellow-rumped Warblers.  Rather than reinventing the wheel and replicating that post I will just provide a link to it.  It shows a very detailed description on molt limits used in ageing and the plumage characteristics that we look at in order to determine the sex of individuals.

- Aaron

NEW BIRDS
31 Yellow-rumped Warbler (Myrtle)
1 White-throated Sparrow

RECAPTURES
1 Hermit Thrush:  return from 11/21/12
1 Gray Catbird
1 Northern Mockingbird
3 Yellow-rumped Warbler (Myrtle):  returns from 10/24/11, 1/9/13
1 Northern Cardinal
1 Eastern Towhee

BANDING STATS
# of Birds Banded:  32
# of Recaptures:  8
# of Species:  7
Effort:  100.0 net-hours
Capture Rate:  40 birds/100 net-hours
# of Nets:  20