We banded our 3000th bird of the season today. This is shaping up to be quite a fall migration to have hit this mark so early in the season. And we haven't even got to the Yellow-rumped Warblers yet...
Gray Catbirds are the most commonly captured birds around the banding station these days. We banded 58 new ones today and recaptured 16 additional individuals. We have already banded over 600 catbirds this season and still have couple weeks left of peak migration for them. To put that into perspective, we banded 573 last fall and 610 in 2012, and that was for the entire season.
We captured an interesting pair of adult male Eastern Towhees today in the same net and at the same time. One of the birds had red eyes and the other had yellow eyes. Both of these birds are most likely residents of KIBS because they were both recaptures. The red-eyed bird was banded during the fall of 2012 as a hatch-year. The yellow-eyed individual was banded last fall as a hatch-year.
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| Eastern Towhee (after hatch-year, male) |
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| Eastern Towhee (after hatch-year, male) |
NEW BIRDS
4 Red-eyed Vireo
2 House Wren
1 Swainson's Thrush
58 Gray Catbird
1 Northern Mockingbird
3 Black-and-White Warbler
12 Common Yellowthroat
1 American Redstart
2 Black-throated Blue Warbler
2 Palm Warbler (Western)
1 Northern Cardinal
2 Indigo Bunting
2 Painted Bunting
RECAPTURES
2 White-eyed Vireo
1 Red-eyed Vireo
1 Carolina Chickadee
1 House Wren
16 Gray Catbird
1 Pine Warbler
2 Eastern Towhee
1 Northern Cardinal
1 Indigo Bunting
BANDING STATS
# of New Birds: 91
# of Recaptures: 26
# of Species: 17
Effort: 128.8 net-hours
Capture Rate: 90.9 birds/100 net-hours
# of Nets: 23
BANDING STAFF
Aaron Given
Libby Natola
William Oakley
Matt Zak
