Thursday, September 18, 2014

1,000th bird banded on a 200 plus bird day

Today was a very exciting and busy day at the banding station. Not only did we band our 1,000th bird of the season, but today was the first 200 plus bird day since the 2012 fall season. Luckily we were fully staffed and with the extra help of Matt Johnson, we were able to operate very efficiently and without falling behind. Our totals for today were 220 new birds and 9 recaptures which included our first Cape May Warbler, Western Palm Warbler and Gray Catbird of the season. Another positive note for today was that even though the majority of our birds were again Common Yellowthroats, we are still seeing a good deal of variation because we banded 17 different species of birds. We are hoping that the weather stays favorable, because it appears that this kind of success might last us throughout the rest of this week.

NEW BIRDS
2 Downy Woodpecker
1 "Traill's" Flycatcher
5 White-eyed Vireo
9 Red-eyed Vireo
1 Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
2 Ovenbird
7 Gray Catbird
1 Northern Waterthrush
1 Black-and-White Warbler
174 Common Yellowthroat
6 American Redstart
1 Cape May Warbler
1 Palm Warbler (Western)
3 Painted Bunting
5 Prairie Warbler 
1 Northern Cardinal

RECAPTURES
3 Red-eyed Vireo
1 Ovenbird
2 Common Yellowthroat 
1 Yellow-breasted Chat
1 Northern Cardinal
1 Prairie Warbler

BANDING STATS
# of New Birds:  220
# of Recaptures:  9
# of Species:  17
Effort:  140.0 net-hours
Capture Rate:  163.6 birds/100 net-hours
# of Nets:  20

BANDING STAFF
Aaron Given
Mattie VandenBoom
William Oakley
Libby Natola
Matt Zak
Matt Johnson