Wind and Common Yellowthroats

Captain Sam's

Despite having to close a few nets due to strong winds this morning we had a steady capture rate that led to an overall productive day. We captured 69 new birds and 11 recaptures for a total of 15 species for the day. One interesting bird that we had today was a Northern Waterthrush that presented us with quite an extreme example of how we are able to age them. Whilst looking at many of the brown warblers, Waterthrush, Ovenbirds, Worm-eating Warblers etc. we look for buffy colored tipping in their flight feathers which would indicate a hatch year bird. On the bird pictured below we have a very obvious example of what we are looking for. You can see that the buff color is very contrasting with the dark brown on the rest of the feathers making it easy to age.

-Sean

Northern Waterthrush with buffy tipping on inner tertial feathers

Little Bear
We had an overcast and windy day at Little Bear today, but to make up for the less than ideal conditions we were slightly busier than we've been the past couple of days. We banded 42 new individuals and recaptured 4 of 14 species. More than half of our catch was made up of Common Yellowthroats, with 26 new birds banded. We had our usual suspects show up today as well as a good variety of migrants, including a new Baltimore Oriole. Our highlight of the day was a bit of a puzzle,  a mystery Wood Pewee that needs further investigation.

Tomorrow we're expecting rain and more wind, but are hopeful than rain will hold out until after we're done banding.

-Nancy

Species	Captain Sam's		Little Bear
	New	Recaps	New	Recaps
Eastern Wood Pewee	-	-	1	-
Traill's Flycatcher	1	-	-	1
Carolina Chickadee	-	-	2	-
Carolina Wren	-	-	-	2
Prairie Warbler	3	-	-	-
American Redstart	2	1	-	-
Common Yellowthroat	52	2	26	-
Yellow Warbler	1	-	-	-
Black and White Warbler	1	-	1	-
Black-throated Blue Warbler	2	-	1	-
Palm Warbler (Western)	1	-	4	-
Red-eyed Vireo	2	-	-	-
Northern Waterthrush	2	-	1	-
Gray Catbird	2	2	1	-
Northern Mockingbird	1	-	-	-
Indigo Bunting	-	-	1	-
Painted Bunting	-	2	-	-
White-eyed Vireo	-	1	1	-
Northern Cardinal	-	2	2	1
Baltimore Oriole	-	-	1	-

Banding Stats	Captain Sam's	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	70	42	112
# of Recaptures	10	4	14
# of Species	15	14	20
Effort (net-hours)	121.2	42.17	163.37
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	66.0	99.6	77.1
Nets	25	8	33

Banding Staff
Aaron Given (CS)
Chris Snook (LB)
Nancy Raginski (LB)
Sean McElaney (CS)
Casey Weissburg (LB)
Ryan Donnelly (CS)