Seaside Sparrow at Captain Sams

 CAPTAIN SAMS

The wind is back with us and it looks like it may stick around for while. We did not have Aiden's Dad's "warbler cannon" so our numbers today were less than yesterday with 28 new birds and 9 recaptures. Today's highlight was a Seaside Sparrow. Like Little Bear's Saltmarsh Sparrow from yesterday, this bird was also captured in one of our upland nets (#23). The tide flooded the station pretty good this morning but I don't think the tide had anything to do with why this bird was captured away from its preferred saltmarsh habitat. I believe this bird (and Little Bear's Saltmarsh Sparrow) had just arrived from an overnight migration and was probably trying to make its way back to the saltmarsh. At the end of a night's migration, most songbirds land prior to dawn and they can end up in some unfamiliar places. As day breaks, they reorient themselves and begin to make their way to more suitable habitat.

 

Seaside Sparrow (After hatch-year, sex unknown)

-Aaron    

LITTLE BEAR

We also suffered some windy conditions at Little Bear this morning and ended the day with 12 newly banded birds and 9 recaptures. One of my favorite birds of the day was a Ruby-crowned Kinglet. This fella was Little Bear's 8th RCKI of the season and the first hatch year. One interesting phenomenon I've noticed after several fall migration banding seasons is that birds will sometimes migrate with their same age and sex cohort. Different age and sex classes will not only migrate together, but also with staggered timing with older birds migrating first. This is also often true during spring migration with older birds migrating north to their breeding grounds first and establishing territories in the best habitat before younger, less experienced birds arrive and choose territories in whatever patches of habitat are left over. In some species, such as Burrowing Owl, this strategy is even more pronounced. In certain western populations of Burrowing Owl some older males are year-round residents, while females and young males will overwinter somewhere south where food resources are plentiful. This strategy evolved as a result of competition over shrinking breeding habitat in the American West, with some males foregoing migration entirely to be the first arrivals on their breeding grounds where they establish and defend territories from other males before females arrive and select mates. 

Ruby-crowned Kinglet (hatch year male)

Anecdotally, it's been interesting to see different age and sex classes of various songbirds pass through the station at different times and I'm guessing we'll be catching more hatch year kinglets pretty soon. 

-Olivia

Species	Captain Sams		Little Bear
	New	Recaps	New	Recaps
Yellow-billed Cuckoo	1	-	-	-
Blue-headed Vireo	-	1	-	-
Carolina Chickadee	-	1	-	-
Ruby-crowned Kinglet	2	1	1	-
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher	-	-	1	-
Northern House Wren	-	-	1	1
Carolina Wren	-	-	-	1
Gray Catbird	6	2	1	4
Hermit Thrush	-	1	1	-
Seaside Sparrow	1	-	-	-
Song Sparrow	1	1	1	-
Northern Waterthrush	-	-	-	1
Common Yellowthroat	4	1	-	1
Palm Warbler (Western)	1	-	-	-
Yellow-rumped Warbler (Myrtle)	11	1	5	1
Painted Bunting	1	-	-	-

Today's Banding Stats	Captain Sams	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	28	12	40
# of Recaptures	9	9	18
# of Species	12	10	16
Effort (net-hours)	151.8	116.25	268.1
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	24.4	18.1	21.6
# of Nets	33	28	-

2026 Fall Cumulative Banding Stats	Captain Sams	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	4,210	2,469	6,679
# of Recaptures	603	381	984
# of Species	83	76	98
Effort (net-hours)	10,306.7	7,090.4	17,397.1
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	46.7	41.3	44.0
# of Days	68	61

Banding Staff

Aaron Given (CS)

Liz Held (LB)

Olivia DeMarchi (LB)

Aiden Gifford (CS)

Julia Hillary (LB)

Nick Schleissmann (LB)

Note:  All banding, marking, and sampling is being conducted under a federally authorized Bird Banding Permit issued by the U.S. Geological Survey’s Bird Banding Lab.