Smashing! A Little Bear First!

Captain Sam's:

Today was a really slow day. We started out with a few runs with a good start of birds but it slowly died down as the day progressed on. We had a total of 19 newly banded birds and 11 recaptures. I know I am making this short and sweet but hopefully these next few days we have some more birds trekking in.

Now onto Little Bear's excitement!!

-Kristin

Little Bear: 

Hello again all our intrigued readers! Today we enjoyed a real scorcher out there, but our numbers were actually higher than yesterday even with less net-hours. We caught 22 individuals with only two of those being recaptures. We had 10 species total keeping our diversity up. This time around we were quite lucky and caught a beautiful specimen of the avian world. Lo and behold, the Eastern Whip-poor-will! This was an all-time first nightjar for Little Bear! Only three other Eastern Whip-poor-wills have been caught at Captain Sam's in all of KIBS history. You may have heard this bird's incessant song at night during the spring or summer before. Listen to it in the previous link and familiarize yourself. Now we need to catch a Chuck-wills-widow, which is the expected nightjar at KIBS that is almost an annual capture at Captain Sam's. Nightjars are nocturnal or crepuscular birds that feed on insects or even some vertebrates like frogs. They have an oversized mouth that they can gape wide open to ensure capture or to consume larger prey.

Hatch-year Female Eastern Whip-poor-will (Photo: DE)

Sporting their beautifully camouflaged feathers, we were able to age this individual as a Hatch-year by the cinnamon tipped primary coverts shown by the red arrow. An After Hatch-year Whip wouldn't have buffy or cinnamon tips to its primary coverts.

Hatch-year Female Eastern Whip-poor-will (Photo: DE)

We were able to sex this bird by looking at the color of the tips of the outer tail feathers or retrices. A female, like this bird, has buffy or cinnamon tips where a male would have white tips.

Hatch-year Female Eastern Whip-poor-will (Photo: JL)

Thanks for reading and all the best wishes to you!

- Dan Errichetti

Species	Captain Sam's		Little Bear
	New	Recaps	New	Recaps
Easter Whip-poor-will	-	-	1	-
Traill's Flycatcher	1	1	-	-
White-eyed Vireo	-	-	1	-
Red-eyed Vireo	3	2	-	-
Carolina Chickadee	-	-	1	-
Carolina Wren	-	-	-	1
Ovenbird	1	1	-	-
Northern Waterthrush	3	1	7	-
Black-and-white Warbler	-	-	1	-
Common Yellowthroat	2	1	3	-
American Redstart	2	-	2	-
Prairie Warbler	4	-	-	4
Northern Cardinal	-	2	-	-
Painted Bunting	3	2	4	-

Today's Banding Stats	Captain Sam's	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	19	20	39
# of Recaptures	11	2	13
# of Species	9	10	14
Effort (net-hours)	102	74	176
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	29.4	29.73	29.55
# of Nets	30	20	-

2020 Fall Cumulative Banding Stats	Captain Sam's	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	415	169	584
# of Recaptures	159	29	188
# of Species	30	28	36
Effort (net-hours)	2,062.02	898.55	2,960.57
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	27.84	22	26.1
# of Days	18	10	-

Banding Staff
Sarah Mueller (LB)
Sarah Stewart (CS)
Vincent Weber (CS)
Dan Errichetti (LB)
Kristin Attinger (CS)
Josh Lefever (LB)