It was a kind of a hectic day of banding today with 54 new birds and 25 recaptures of 10 different species. I was expecting another windy morning but surprisingly it was rather calm for the first 2 hours. As a result, I captured 29 birds during that time. The wind picked up around 8:15am and a line of rain associated with the cold front that was moving through our area was heading my way. I decided to close the nets and call it a day. After closing most of the nets, I checked the radar again and noticed that as the rain approached the coast it dissipated, so I left a handful of nets close to the banding open. Around 10:30am the threat of rain was gone and the wind had died down again so I opened up all the nets again. It started to get windy again around 1:00pm so I shut everything down for good and went home.
The highlight of the day was a first-of-the-season Northern Flicker. Flickers have been present at the banding station for weeks now but this one decided to fly low enough to get caught in the net. I feel bad that the rest of the banding crew missed out on this one and I was the only one there today to enjoy it.
The Northern Flicker that I banded today was a second-year (SY) female. Woodpeckers have a more complex molt than most passerines. When aging woodpecker we look at the primary coverts. Hatch-year (HY) birds will have uniform primary coverts however they will be browinsh and worn in the fall. SY birds will have a mix of brown retained primary coverts and darker replaced ones. Note in the 2nd photo below that the outer 3-4 primary coverts have been replaced and are much darker than the unreplaced inner primary coverts. If this bird was an after second-year (ASY), all of the primary coverts would be uniformly dark.
-Aaron
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| Northern Flicker (second-year, female) Note the lack of black malar stripe behind bill indicating female. |
 |
| Wing of Northern Flicker. Note the unreplaced inner primary covert are brown next to the blackish replaced outer primary coverts. This molt pattern indicates a second-year bird - a bird that was hatched in 2014. |
| Species | Captain Sam's | Little Bear | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New | Recaps | New | Recaps | |
| Northern Flicker |
1
| - | - | - |
| Carolina Chickadee | - |
1
| - | - |
| Ruby-crowned Kinglet | - |
3
| - | - |
| Gray Catbird |
3
|
6
| - | - |
| Brown Thrasher | - |
1
| - | - |
| Yellow-rumped Warbler |
47
|
11
| - | - |
| Song Sparrow |
1
| - | - | - |
| Swamp Sparrow | - |
2
| - | - |
| White-throated Sparrow |
1
| - | - | - |
| Northern Cardinal | - |
1
| - | - |
| Banding Stats | Captain Sam's | Little Bear | TOTAL |
|---|---|---|---|
| # Birds Banded |
53
|
||
| # of Recaptures |
25
|
||
| # of Species |
10
|
||
| Effort (net-hours) |
130.0
|
||
| Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours) |
60.0
|
||
| Nets |
25
|
Banding Staff
Aaron Given (CS)
