Monday, November 2, 2015

Slow days continue

Captain Sam's

The slowdown continued today at Captain Sam's, with just 15 new birds and 14 recaptures of 10 species. Gray Catbirds and Myrtle Warblers continued to be our biggest catches, and we recaptured the hatch-year female Sharp-shinned Hawk from yesterday, allowing a great photo opportunity on an otherwise slow, humid and overcast day. 

Another interesting thing about today was yet another set of four different previous season recaptures: a Hermit Thrush, Swamp Sparrow and Eastern Towhee all originally banded in the fall migration season of 2014, and a Northern Cardinal banded in November 2012, recaptured twice every year since then.

-Casey

Hermit Thrush (After-hatch-year, sex unknown)
Sharp-shinned Hawk (hatch-year female)
Photos by Casey Weissburg

Little Bear

It was a slow, overcast day out at Little Bear today with 24 new birds banded and 8 recaptures of only 9 species. The excitement came before our first net run when we were coming back from opening nets and we found an Eastern-screech Owl in one of our nets. The Eastern-screech Owl was a red morph instead of the usual gray morphs we've been catching this year. The only difference between the two morphs is one is red and one is gray, but the gray morph Eastern-screech Owl is more common. These are not separate species but just variation within the species. This was also a male Eastern-screech owl, which we determined by measuring the length of its tail. This was the first owl I've ever banded and the second raptor I banded this week! I look forward to what the rest of the week holds, and hopefully we catch more birds!

-Michael

Hatch-year, male Eastern-screech Owl (red morph)
Picture by Chris Snook

  SpeciesCaptain Sam'sLittle Bear
NewRecapsNewRecaps
Sharp-shinned Hawk -1--
Eastern-screech Owl --1-
House Wren121-
Carolina Wren -1--
Ruby-crowned Kinglet1---
Hermit Thrush-1--
Gray Catbird5475
Common Yellowthroat1-3-
Palm Warbler (Western)--2-
Yellow-rumped Warbler (Myrtle)613-
Song Sparrow--3-
Swamp Sparrow-142
Eastern Towhee 11--
Northern Cardinal-1-1


 Banding StatsCaptain Sam'sLittle BearTOTAL
# Birds Banded152439
# of Recaptures14822
# of Species10919
Effort (net-hours)131.2580.0211.25
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)22.0940.028.88
Nets251641

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 (LB)