First Day of the 2017 Fall Migration Season

Today was the first day of the 2017 fall migration banding season and we are looking forward to another great season at KIBS.  We will be operating at both the Captain Sam's site and the Little Bear site again this year.  The Captain Sam's site located at the west end of Kiawah will be in its 9th year and will be operated everyday until the end of November.  We will be running the same 26 nets as last season.   The Little Bear site located at the far eastern end of Kiawah will begin its 3rd year in about a week (or earlier) and will be operated daily until mid-November.  We will be running 20 mist nets again out at Little Bear again this season.

We have a great team working at KIBS this year!  Most of the banding assistants will arrive between August 15-28.  I will update the "Staff" page in the coming weeks with everybody's profile.  I am happy to have Mattie VandenBoom returning for her 5th fall season!  She will leading the banding station at Little Bear.  I am also happy to have Michael Gamble coming back for his 3rd season.  I'd like to welcome Kristen Oliver, Brandon Connare, Hannah Conley, and Paul Carroll to Kiawah Island!  A big thanks to Michael Gamble, Kristen Oliver, and Chris Snook for helping me last week clear net lanes and put up the mist nets.

We had a good first day with 27 new birds and 3 recaptures of 13 different species.  As far as "first days" go, it was fairly average with respect to total numbers of birds captured.  Species diversity was actually really good for mid-August with 13 species and 7 of those could be considered true migrants for the site.  The highlight today came in the first net round when I pulled a Louisiana Waterthrush out of net 14.  This is only the 3rd Louisiana Waterthrush we have banded at KIBS with the other ones coming in 2012 and 2014.  Michael and Kristen were already at the table with Northern Waterthrush and Painted Bunting.  Having both Louisiana and Northern Waterthrush at the same time allowed for a unique opportunity to study the differences of these two look-a-like species.

I was going to write about all of the differences between Louisiana and Northern Waterthrushes but it appears I already did that in 2012 and 2014 so instead of reinventing the wheel, I will just link to those posts.

https://kiawahislandbanding.blogspot.com/2012/09/saturdays-results-plus-new-species.html
https://kiawahislandbanding.blogspot.com/2014/08/northern-waterthrush-vs-louisiana.html


The following pics are from today...

Louisiana Waterthrush (hatch-year, sex unknown)

Louisiana Waterthrush (left), Northern Waterthrush (right)

Species	Captain Sam's		Little Bear
	New	Recaps	New	Recaps
Downy Woodpecker	2	-	-	-
Great Crested Flycatcher	1	-	-	-
Carolina Chickadee	3	1	-	-
Carolina Wren	1	-	-	-
Northern Waterthrush	5	-	-	-
Louisiana Waterthrush	1	-	-	-
Hooded Warbler	1	-	-	-
Prothonotary Warbler	1	-	-	-
American Redstart	1	-	-	-
Prairie Warbler	1	-	-	-
Yellow Warbler	1	-	-	-
Northern Cardinal	4	-	-	-
Painted Bunting	5	2	-	-

Banding Stats	Captain Sam's	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	27	-	27
# of Recaptures	3	-	3
# of Species	13	-	13
Effort (net-hours)	143.0	-	143.0
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	21.0	-	21.0
# of Nets	26	-	26

Banding Staff
Aaron Given
Michael Gamble
Kristen Oliver