Little Yellow Savior

 Captain Sam's:

We’ve certainly hit another lull in migration however we did catch one super neat bird today; a Mourning Warbler! Josh wrote about the one we caught the other day at Little Bear but this is quite unusual for both stations to catch one. The one a few days ago was a hatching year female and we believe the one today was as well but we’ve got to do a little extra research to be sure. The Mourning Warbler in the hand is quite different from its close relative the Common Yellowthroat.  It is much bigger and the amount and overall yellow-ness is much brighter for hatching years. That being said in the field the two can be a challenge for some birders. This is usually due to visual similarities and the sulkiness of members of the genus Geothlypis, which these two are apart of. Crazy enough this species is the first warbler species I ever saw as a birdwatcher and is considered my “spark bird”. I have quite fond and vivid memories of a singing male on the Blue Ridge Parkway some years back. Now I’ve got fond memories of the species here on Kiawah!

        Akin to trichas

        An uncommon yellowthroat

        My avian spark

-Nate 

Common Yellowthroat Geothlypis trichas (Left) and Mourning Warbler Geothlypis philadelphia (Right)

Little Bear: 

Today was not a bad day for moving back over to Little Bear. We had a total of 21 birds for the day but I guess it is better than nothing at all. It was nice to start out the day with some nice overcast skies which allowed us to have good amount of birds during our first two runs. I'm hoping as the week goes on something cool will show up in our nets!

-Kristin

Species	Captain Sam's		Little Bear
	New	Recaps	New	Recaps
Red-eyed Vireo	3	-	-	-
Northern Mockingbird	-	-	1	-
Northern Waterthrush	3	-	2	-
Black-and-white Warbler	1	-	-	-
Common Yellowthroat	7	-	3	-
Mourning Warbler	1	-	-	-
Yellow Warbler	-	-	1	-
Black-Throated Blue Warbler	-	-	1	-
Palm Warbler (western)	-	-	3	-
Prairie Warbler	-	-	3	-
Northern Cardinal	-	-	-	1
Painted Bunting	2	-	2	1

Today's Banding Stats	Captain Sam's	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	17	16	33
# of Recaptures	0	5	5
# of Species	6	9	12
Effort (net-hours)	147	103.5	250.5
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	11.6	20.3	13.2
# of Nets	30	23	-

2021 Fall Cumulative Banding Stats	Captain Sam's	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	738	446	1184
# of Recaptures	145	64	209
# of Species	41	38	47
Effort (net-hours)	3821.50	2,291.4	6112.9
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	23.1	22.3	22.7
# of Days	28	23	-

Banding Staff

Aaron Given (CS)

Kristin Attinger (LB)

Kandace Glanville (CS)

Ben Stalheim (CS)

Nate Watkins (CS)

Josh Lefever (LB)