Disappointing Cold Front

Captain Sam's

With a cold front pushing in yesterday morning, we were expecting bird movement overnight and a busy morning out at Captain Sam's, but that was not the case. Even though we caught more new birds than yesterday, we ended up with fewer total birds with 25 new birds and 7 recaptures of 8 species. This low number may be due to the wind that affected us most of the morning. We did catch another Hermit Thrush that was banded in 2012. This Hermit Thrush was also recaught a year ago today, along with several other times last fall. It's possible this one will stick around through the winter since they are a common resident of South Carolina during the winter. The Hermit Thrush is the only thrush species, besides the American Robin and Eastern Bluebird, that winters in South Carolina. Also, we heard many American Robins around the station and flying over but none ended up in our nets.

-Michael Gamble

Little Bear

The northeasterly winds this morning allowed us to only open 9 of our nets. Despite this, after putting in 3.5 hours of work, we managed to catch 19 new birds and 15 recaptures of 6 species. Yellow-rumped Warblers continue to out number Gray Catbirds. Several of the catbirds that we have been catching have a high fat content. This is good as it means the catbirds that are still migrating are getting enough to eat when foraging.   

- Michael R

Species	Captain Sam's		Little Bear
	New	Recaps	New	Recaps
Golden-crowned Kinglet	1	-	1	-
Ruby-crowned Kinglet	2	-	-	-
Hermit Thrush	2	1	1	-
Gray Catbird	1	6	3	9
Yellow-rumped Warbler	13	-	14	4
Song Sparrow	1	-	-	1
Swamp Sparrow	4	-	-	-
White-throated Sparrow	1	-	-	-
White-crowned Sparrow	-	-	-	1

Banding Stats	Captain Sam's	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	25	19	44
# of Recaptures	7	15	22
# of Species	8	6	9
Effort (net-hours)	103.2	31.5	134.7
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	31.0	107.9	48.9
# of Nets	26	9	35

Banding Staff
Aaron Given (CS)
Blaine Carnes (LB)
Mattie VandenBoom (CS)
Alison Nevins (LB)
Col Lauzau (LB)
Michael Gamble (CS)
Michael Rodgers (LB)
Ryan Donnelly (CS)
Nancy Raginski (CS)