It was a slow day at the "Spit" with only 17 new birds and 14 recaptures of 13 different species. Large tides associated with the full moon cycle are flooding much of the banding station with several inches of water - up to 12" in some areas! This makes navigating the banding trails a much slower process. I don't think the tides had anything to do with the lack of birds captured today. I believe that many birds left last night taking advantage of the "local" north wind. Rain or other unfavorable conditions several hundred miles north of here slowed migration, so we did not have many new birds to replace the ones that left.
Even though it was slow, it was an interesting day as we banded the 2nd ever Cooper's Hawk during fall migration at KIBS (the first one was banded last fall). The Coop, a juvenile male, flew into the net just as Casey had finished removing a Northern Cardinal. I heard her yell, "HAWK" from one net over and rushed over to help. It took both of us to finally secure the powerful raptor and get it into a safe hold (for us and the bird). Not to be completely overshadowed by the Cooper's Hawk account, we also had a first-of-the-season Nashville Warbler!
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| Cooper's Hawk (hatch-year, male) |
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| Nashville Warbler (hatch-year, male) |
Little Bear
It was the first day running the four new net lanes out at Little Bear and they seemed to have about the same capture rate as the others. One interesting find was the new nets caught 8 out of the 12 recaptures, which means the resident species we banded previously moved to another area of the station due to their familiarity of the location of our original net lanes. Along with the 12 recaptures, we banded 28 new birds of 14 species. It was a tie between the Gray Catbird and Common Yellowthroat for numbers caught (both with 10), so it looks like more Gray Catbirds are beginning to migrate through the station. We also had 2 first-of the-seasons with a Marsh Wren and a Saltmarsh Sparrow! We had a massive tide that inundated net lanes 5-10, which explains why these species were pushed into our site from the marsh. The Saltmarsh Sparrow is one species of marsh sparrow Aaron bands here on Kiawah in the winter, so it was exciting to know they are starting to show up again. We are expecting more extremely high tides over the next few days so we will see what that pushes in!
-Michael
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| Saltmarsh Sparrow (hatch-year, sex unknown) |
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| Marsh Wren (hatch-year, sex unknown) Photos by Mattie VandenBoom |
| Species | Captain Sam's | Little Bear | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New | Recaps | New | Recaps | |
| Cooper's Hawk | 1 | - | - | - |
| White-eyed Vireo | - | 1 | - | 2 |
| Red-eyed Vireo | - | 1 | 1 | - |
| Carolina Chickadee | - | - | - | 1 |
| House Wren | - | - | 1 | - |
| Marsh Wren | - | - | 1 | - |
| Carolina Wren | - | 1 | - | 2 |
| Blue-gray Gnatcatcher | - | - | 1 | - |
| Gray Catbird | 2 | 2 | 10 | - |
| Brown Thrasher | 1 | 1 | - | - |
| Worm-eating Warbler | - | 1 | - | - |
| Nashville Warbler | 1 | - | - | - |
| Common Yellowthroat | 8 | 3 | 10 | 1 |
| American Redstart | - | - | 1 | 2 |
| Yellow Warbler | 2 | - | - | - |
| Palm Warbler (Western) | 1 | - | - | - |
| Saltmarsh Sparrow | - | - | 1 | - |
| Northern Cardinal | - | 2 | - | 1 |
| Indigo Bunting | - | - | 1 | - |
| Painted Bunting | 1 | 2 | 1 | 2 |
| Banding Stats | Captain Sam's | Little Bear | TOTAL |
|---|---|---|---|
| # Birds Banded | 17 | 28 | 45 |
| # of Recaptures | 14 | 12 | 26 |
| # of Species | 13 | 14 | 20 |
| Effort (net-hours) | 132.5 | 70.0 | 202.5 |
| Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours) | 23.4 | 57.1 | 35.1 |
| Nets | 25 | 14 | 39 |
Banding Staff
Aaron Given (CS)
Mattie VandenBoom (LB)
Chris Snook (LB)
Nancy Raginski (CS)
Sean McElaney (CS)
Casey Weissburg (CS)
Michael Gamble (LB)
Ryan Donnelly (CS)
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