Saturday's Results: Winter Birds are Here!

We did much better than I had expected with 58 new birds and 21 recaptures of 15 different species.  Species that migrant to the tropics for the "winter" have started to peter out over that last couple of weeks and have been replaced by species that migrate to the southern portions of North America to spend the non-breeding season.   Most of what we captured today are species that are commonly thought of as "our winter birds".       

 

We banded our first ever Red-breasted Nuthatch and Winter Wren today!  We have been hearing (and seeing) 1 or 2 Red-breasted Nuthatches around the banding station but never thought we would ever get one in the net because they spend most of their time way up in the pine trees.  Last year we had a Winter Wren that hung around the banding table for a day, so I was hopeful that we might get one this year.  I had a prior commitment to attend to this morning and unfortunately missed them both.    



Red-breasted Nuthatch (after hatch-year, female)




Winter Wren (after hatch-year, sex unknown)
Photo by DeeAnne Meliopoulos

We had two more interesting recaptures today as well.  The first was a Gray Catbird that was originally banded two years ago on 11/01/10.  The other was a Yellow-rumped Warbler that was banded on 11/18/10 and recaptured again last fall on 11/29/11 making this its 3rd fall in-a-row that it has been captured at KIBS.                  

NEW BIRDS

1 Red-breasted Nuthatch

2 House Wren

1 Winter Wren

16 Gray Catbird

1 Northern Mockingbird

1 Orange-crowned Warbler

11 Yellow-rumped Warbler (Myrtle)

10 Palm Warbler (Western)

8 Common Yellowthroat

1 Clay-colored Sparrow

2 Song Sparrow

2 Swamp Sparrow

1 Indigo Bunting

1 Painted Bunting

 

RECAPTURES

1 Carolina Chickadee

19 Gray Catbird

1 Yellow-rumped Warbler (Myrtle) 

 

BANDING STATS

# of Birds Banded:  58

# of Recaptures:  21

# of Species:  15

Effort:  86.7 net-hours

Capture Rate:  91.1 birds/100 net-hours

# of Nets:  17