Bicknell's and Bats

 CAPTAIN SAMS

Well folks today was pretty much what you'd expect with the weather and the trend of our last few days. We got a total of 13 birds, 6 of which were new. We dodged some storms in the morning until we couldn't any more and they eventually started to hit us. With the weather and low activity we decided to close pretty early. On a more positive note we did get our first of season Bicknell's Thrush (BITH). KIBS has only caught a handful of these guys so we were excited to get another. BITH usually migrate south over the Atlantic from the northeastern U.S. to the Dominican, but the storms over the big ol ocean probably caused this fella to touch down. BITH look a lot like Gray-cheeked Thrush, and were actually considered a subspecies of Gray-cheeked until the mid 90s. Lucky for us, some easy measurements usually allow us to distinguish between the two.

BITH aren't doing too hot these days. In the past 50 years they've lost over 50% of their population, and now a dangerously low population that shows steep decline. It's estimated that there are only about 110,000 of these fellas out there in the wild. They've disappeared from numerous breeding locations, and will lose an estimated 50% or more of their breeding habitat by 2038 (that's not good). BITH's range is pretty small already, so conserving and protecting these areas is important for the longevity of their species and others.

Bicknell's Thrush Range Map

Bicknell's Thrush, After hatch year, Sex unknown

-Aiden

LITTLE BEAR

Equally (not) busy at Little Bear. 13 birds total, though the ratio of new to recapture was a little different, as we had 12 newly banded birds and 1 bird was a recaptured hatch year Northern Cardinal.

In other news, I have recently finished analyzing all of my bat recordings captured from September 24 to 29, the same week we banded over 1500 migrants. Bird migration seemed to coincide with some bat migration during that time.

You may recall September 24 was quite slow for the banding stations, and it was quite slow for bat activity too. However, in the next few days, bat activity increased. The bats were so active that I was able to record about 7000 audio files in 6 nights on my PippyG bat detector. Here are some interesting data visuals.

Number of bat pulses recorded at Little Bear by night
(e.g. 2026-09-24 is from September 24 8pm to September 25 5am)
Bat activity peaked significantly on the night of September 26.

Number of recording passes per species
Each recording pass is at least 3 pulses and species is identified at a 99% confidence level by BattyBirdNetAnalyzer. Free-tailed bats seemed to be the most abundant during the sampling period.

Bat activity by species per half hour
Free-tailed bats seemed to be the most abundant, and activity seemed to peak at 3 to 5am, though my detector gave out during this time on the big activity day, so it is possible that there's more activity than pictured.

Hourly bat activity at Little Bear
There were consistent detections throughout the night on the 25th and 26th, but bat activity did not start until midnight on the 27th. Most activity was from Free-tailed Bats on that day.

Previously, I recorded Northern Yellow Bats, Evening Bats and Free-tailed Bats. This time I was also able to detect some Eastern red bats, Hoary bats and Silver-haired/Big brown bats. The Silver-haired/Big brown bats in my audios were indistinguishable as they echolocate at similar frequencies when searching for prey. There seems to be good bat diversity at Little Bear.

🦇 Jasmine

Species	Captain Sam's		Little Bear
	New	Recaps	New	Recaps
Traill's Flycatcher	1	-	-	-
White-eyed Vireo	1	3	-	-
Carolina Chickadee	-	1	-	-
Veery	-	-	1	-
Bicknell's Thrush	1	-	-	-
Gray Catbird	-	1	4	-
Brown Thrasher	1	-	-	-
Ovenbird	-	-	1	-
Common Yellowthroat	1	1	2	-
American Redstart	-	1	1	-
Northern Yellow Warbler	-	-	1	-
Western Palm Warbler	1	-	1	-
Northern Cardinal	-	-	1	1

Today's Banding Stats	Captain Sams	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	6	12	18
# of Recaptures	7	1	8
# of Species	9	8	13
Effort (net-hours)	72.6	108.8	181.4
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	17.9	12.0	14.3
# of Nets	33	29	62

2026 Fall Cumulative Banding Stats	Captain Sams	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	2458	1347	3805
# of Recaptures	350	162	412
# of Species	55	56	69
Effort (net-hours)	7127.4	4638.1	11765.6
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	39.4	32.1	35.5
# of Days	49	41

Banding Staff

Michael Gamble (CS)

Olivia DeMarchi (LB)

Jasmine Fu (LB)

Aiden Gifford (CS)

Nick Schliesmann (LB)

Adrianna Nelson (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.