Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Another slow day

Captain Sam's

Upon opening this morning it was quite apparent that we were in for a slow day, aside from the distant mewing of one or two catbirds the silence throughout our site was almost eerie. After getting only a few birds on our first net run it appeared that we were in for an even slower day than yesterday. However, we were saved by a few little flocks of Yellow-rumps which brought our daily total to 35 new birds and 14 recaptures of 5 different species. Our highlight of the day was an after hatch year male Eastern Towhee which was a recap that we banded last year.

-Sean

AHY male Eastern Towhee


Little Bear

Despite the calm foggy conditions this morning, normally good for banding, there was a paucity of birds today with only 20 new birds and 9 recaptures trapped today. A new female Eastern Towhee was the bright spot of the morning along with our 67th new Northern Cardinal of the season.

The probable cause was the weather system that prevented us from banding yesterday moving further North overnight. This prevented any noticeable migration along the coast during the night. During its visit the weather system dropped a lot of rain on the site, which was already saturated from recent rain and high tides, so that net lanes that had dried out on Monday were now under water again.

We are now eagerly awaiting the next cold front...

- Chris
 
  Species Captain Sam's Little Bear
New Recaps New Recaps
White-eyed Vireo
Carolina Chickadee
1
-
-
-
-
-
-
2
Gray Catbird 2 8 6 2
Yellow-rumped Warbler 30 2 11 2
Eastern Towhee - 1 1 -
Song Sparrow 1 - 1 -
Swamp Sparrow 1 3 - 1
Northern Cardinal - - 1 1


 Banding Stats Captain Sam's Little Bear TOTAL
# Birds Banded 35 20 55
# of Recaptures 14 8 23
# of Species 5 7 7
Effort (net-hours) 135.0 80.0 215.0
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours) 36.3 35.0 36.3
Nets 25 16 41

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)