October 24, 2017

Captain Sam's 
It was hopefully the last really slow day of the week out at Captain Sam's with 9 new birds and 14 recaptures of 10 species. The highlight of the morning was a first-of-the-season Nashville Warbler for Captain Sam's. Little Bear caught one earlier in the season and like that one, this one was a hatch-year male as well. This time of year, hatch-year males will have a rufous crown patch while hatch-year females will not. Both adults (male and female) will have a varying amount of rufous in the crown, with males getting more. Males will also have a distinct gray head that noticeably contrasts with the back.

The storms that came with this cold front have pushed through the Northeast so we should see a lot of movement along the East coast overnight. The Northwest winds will also be in our favor so hopefully it will shape up to be a pretty good morning tomorrow!

Nashville Warbler (hatch-year, male)

-Michael

Little Bear

It was another slow day at little bear. We were hopeful that the cold font that came through our area last night would have brought some birds with it this morning, but no luck today. This is mostly due to the fact that this front is so large its spanning pretty much the entire east coast. This cold front didn't sweep through the entire coast simultaneously though, and therefore the Northeast was still getting a lot of rain overnight and into the morning. Hopefully northwest winds and clear skies tomorrow will encourage some birds from up north the move down our way tomorrow!

We did start our morning off quite well, despite the overall lack of bird activity. Our first capture of the day was an Eastern Screech Owl! This was another Hatch-year red morph cutie who landed in our net first thing this morning. Like many other nocturnal avian species Screech-owls have rictal bristles as well. Large eyes with specially adapted rod receptors, unlike diurnal species who have cone receptors, and serrations on the leading primary feather of each wing makes them silent night hunting machines! Owls have many adaptations that allow them to be extremely efficient hunters with a prey capture efficiency of up to 78% at times (https://tinyurl.com/y7rhp2p8)!

Though color morphs of these birds are believed to be related to genetics and allele dominance, there are some studies to support the idea that grey and brown morph birds are more common in the northern portions of their range than red morph birds because of survival rates. Some studies support theories that red morph birds of owls, and other species such as grouse, are less capable of surviving in colder temperatures (https://tinyurl.com/m3ws4t9).

Eastern Screech-Owl (Hatch-year, unknown)
Notice the rictal bristles around the nares!

Nice serrations on the outer primary and a Molt limit!

-Kristen

Species	Captain Sam's		Little Bear
	New	Recaps	New	Recaps
Eastern Screech-Owl	-	-	1	-
Tufted Titmouse	-	-	1	-
House Wren	-	1	1	1
Gray Catbird	4	9	7	6
Song Sparrow	1	1	-	-
Swamp Sparrow	-	1	-	-
Nashville Warbler	1	-	-	-
Common Yellowthroat	-	-	1	-
Magnolia Warbler	1	-	-	-
Black-throated Blue Warbler	-	-	1	-
Palm Warbler (Western)	-	-	6	-
Yellow-rumped Warbler (Myrtle)	1	-	5	-
Prairie Warbler	-	1	-	-
Northern Cardinal	-	1	-	-
Painted Bunting	1	-	-	1

Banding Stats	Captain Sam's	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	9	23	32
# of Recaptures	14	8	22
# of Species	10	9	15
Effort (net-hours)	135	110	245
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	17.0	28.2	22
# of Nets	25-26	20	45-46

Banding Staff
Aaron Given (CS)
Mattie VandenBoom (LB)
Michael Gamble (CS)
Kristen Oliver (LB)
Brandon Connare (CS)
Paul Carroll (CS)
Hannah Conley (LB)