Saturday, September 2, 2017

Captain Sam's
We had to wait out some thunderstorms this morning before opening nets, but it was expected to be a pretty slow day regardless. We ended with 7 new birds and 4 recaptures of just 6 species. We caught 4 more Northern Waterthrush, which is turning out to be a good year for them.

We also had many Barn Swallows flying low over the marsh, which we see pretty regularly during fall migration. In an attempt to catch some, Aaron decided to set up a net right below a ridge where the swallows were dropping down to forage over the marsh. We didn't have any luck but we plan to try again tomorrow. The only time we usually catch swallows is when the Tree Swallows arrive and start swarming over the banding station, sometimes into the thousands. On some cold mornings, a flock may drop down to feed on wax myrtle berries near one of our nets, leaving us with a net full of Tree Swallows!

-Michael

Little Bear
We had a late start this morning due to a lingering overnight thunderstorm. Adding to the late start, nets 13 and 14 had large branches fallen over them postponing opening time to 0705 AM. Mosquitoes took advantage of the overcast day and were persistently swarming us. We trapped a total of 14 birds with 9 new birds and 5 recaptures with a diversity of 8 species.
During one of our runs with 0 birds, we used some teamwork to move a very large branch out of the path directly parallel to net 3, which required sawing a portion off to make it manageable. 

-Paul




  SpeciesCaptain Sam'sLittle Bear
NewRecapsNewRecaps
Downy Woodpecker
-
1
-
-
Red-eyed Vireo
1
-
-
-
Carolina Chickadee
-
2
-
-
Carolina Wren
-
-
1
1
Brown Thrasher
-
-
-
1
Ovenbird
-
-
1
-
Northern Waterthrush
4
1
3
-
American Redstart
1
-
-
1
Yellow Warbler
-
-
1
-
Prairie Warbler
-
-
3
-
Northern Cardinal 
-
-
-
2
Painted Bunting 
1
-
-
-




 Banding StatsCaptain Sam'sLittle BearTOTAL
# Birds Banded
7
9
16
# of Recaptures
4
5
9
# of Species
6
8
12
Effort (net-hours)
113.3
102.0
215.3
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)
9.7
13.7
11.6
# of Nets
26
20
46


Banding Staff
Aaron Given (CS)
Chris Snook (CS)
Mattie VandenBoom (LB)
Michael Gamble (CS)
Brandon Connare (CS)
Paul Carroll (LB)
Hannah Conley (LB)