The Snowbirds Return to Kiawah Island

 CAPTAIN SAMS

It was pretty slow out there with 13 new birds and 7 recaptures. We were able to make some progress on net repairs at least. This is the time of year when we started to catch individuals that likely spend the winter at the banding site. Because birds generally have good site fidelity to breeding and wintering areas, we get a lot of recaptures of wintering birds. Today we captured a Gray Catbird and a Hermit Thrush that we banded back in 2022 and anther catbird that was banded last year. We will likely recapture these birds several times during the rest of the fall and winter as they make Kiawah Island their "winter home".

-Aaron

LITTLE BEAR

'Twas another pretty sluggish day at Little Bear with 10 newly banded birds and 10 recaptures of 8 species. Nothing too notable happened, but one interesting bird was a recap after hatch year female Common Yellowthroat originally banded on 9/26/2025. We recaptured this bird for the first time over a month ago on 9/25/2026 making it almost exactly a year in between captures. Since this bird has been sticking around Little Bear for over a month at this point, it's likely she calls this area home for the winter and will spend the next several months hanging out around Little Bear. Another interesting recapture was an after hatch year Gray Catbird originally banded as a hatch year in 2020 making it over 6 years old! According to The Animal Aging and Longevity Database, on average, catbirds will live to 2.5 years in the wild, although the oldest age recorded for a catbird was 17.9 years. It's not too common to catch birds you know are 5+ years old and it's cool to see that an old recapture is doing well.

-Olivia

Species	Captain Sams		Little Bear
	New	Recaps	New	Recaps
Yellow-billed Cuckoo	-	-	1	-
Downy Woodpecker	-	1	-	-
Ruby-crowned Kinglet	1	-	-	-
Carolina Wren	-	-	-	1
Gray Catbird	2	4	-	6
Hermit Thrush	-	1	1	-
Swamp Sparrow	2	-	2	-
Common Yellowthroat	1	-	1	2
Western Palm Warbler	-	-	2	-
Yellow-rumped Warbler (Myrtle)	5	-	3	1
Northern Cardinal	-	1	-	-
Painted Bunting	2	-	-	-

Today's Banding Stats	Captain Sams	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	13	10	23
# of Recaptures	7	10	17
# of Species	10	8	12
Effort (net-hours)	161.0	142.8	303.8
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	12.4	14	13.2
# of Nets	33	28	61

2026 Fall Cumulative Banding Stats	Captain Sams	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	4,298	2,536	6,834
# of Recaptures	637	422	1,059
# of Species	84	76	98
Effort (net-hours)	11,050.9	7,700.1	18,751
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	44.7	38.4	41.55
# of Days	73	66

Banding Staff

Aaron Given (CS)

Michael Gamble (CS)

Liz Held (LB)

Olivia DeMarchi (LB)

Jasmine Fu (LB)

Aiden Gifford (CS)

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.