FOS: Swainson's Thrush

Captain Sam's

We opened nets to a very foggy banding site this morning, as well as a substantial amount of standing water due to the high tide and Thursday night's storm. Despite the fog and water, we were had a very busy first net round and caught 28 birds. Overall our day was steady with 56 new individuals banded and 14 recaptured of 19 species. Common Yellowthroats were, as usual, the majority of birds caught, with 23 banded. We had decent warbler diversity with 8 different species between our banded and recaptured birds, we also heard at least one Blackpoll warbler. South Carolina is approximately half way between their wintering grounds and where they start their migration in North-Eastern North America, we expect them to hang around Kiawah for a couple more days to replenish their fat stores as well as wait for more favorable weather conditions before continuing their migration. We also caught two hatch year Ruby-throated Hummingbirds today, a male and a female.

We're expecting North winds over night and hope this means we'll see some new migrant species at Captain Sam's.

-Nancy

Little Bear

 With an overcast morning and no new cold fronts pushing through, we were expecting a slow down from the previous mornings we have recently had. The standing water, remaining from Thursday night's storm, in the net lanes doesn't deter the birds from feeding (nets are raised higher so that there is a bigger gap below the nets  than normal). Although the morning's catch was slow it was steady finally amounting to 36 new birds and 6 recaptures of 13 species.

The highlight of the morning was the First of the Season Swainson's Thrush. Although we have been catching Veery's for a while now, Swainson's Thrushes seem, to me, to herald the closing of the Fall and the looming of winter. The other species of interest was the Worm-eating Warbler which we have caught a few this year.

During the quite periods we erected 4 new nets in an area that we haven't explored until yesterday afternoon. We are looking forward to the results tomorrow when we start using these new net lanes.

Swainson's Thrush - Hatch Year

- Chris

Species	Captain Sam's		Little Bear
	New	Recaps	New	Recaps
Traill's Flycatcher	1	-	-	-
Eastern Wood Pewee	1	-	-	-
White-eyed Vireo	-	-	-	2
Red-eyed Vireo	2	2	4	-
Carolina Chickadee	-	1	-	-
Carolina Wren	-	1	-	-
House Wren	1	-	-	-
Swainson's Thrush	-	-	1	-
Gray Catbird	9	1	3	-
Northern Mockingbird	1	-	-	-
Ovenbird	1	-	-	-
Worm-eating Warbler	-	1	1	-
Black and White Warbler	-	1	2	-
Common Yellowthroat	23	3	15	4
American Redstart	6	2	4	-
Yellow Warbler	-	-	1	-
Black-throated Blue Warbler	-	-	1	-
Palm Warbler (Western)	5	-	1	-
Prairie Warbler	1	-	1	-
Yellow-breasted Chat	2	-	-	-
Northern Cardinal	2	-	2	-
Painted Bunting	1	2	-	-

Banding Stats	Captain Sam's	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	56	36	92
# of Recaptures	14	6	20
# of Species	18	13	22
Effort (net-hours)	132.5	50.0	182.2
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	52.83	82.0	61.5
Nets	25	10	35

Banding Staff
Aaron Given (CS)
Mattie VandenBoom (LB)
Chris Snook (LB)
Nancy Raginski (CS)
Casey Weissburg (CS)
Micheal Gamble (LB)
Ryan Donnelly (CS)