15 November 2017

Captain Sam's

The slow capture rate days are continuing. Strong north winds today made our nets very visible and kept bird activity at a low. Most of our captures today were recaptures except for a few new Yellow-rumps passing through. One Yellow-rump in particular caught our attention in the net.

Yellow-rumped Warbler (Myrtle) (After hatch-year, Female)

This adult female yellow-rump was partially leucistic! This is something we see occasionally in catbirds, common yellow-throats, and a few other commonly captured species. This bird was particularly interesting because of the extent of the leucisim throughout her plumage. Typically we will see a white toe nail or a few white feathers randomly on one wing. This female seems to have some symmetry to the white feathers and even had white spots on her legs and toes!

We call this bird leucistic instead of albino because she is not completely white and has a normal eye color. Though both are genetically linked, albinism is a lack of melanin production in the skin, hair, eyes, and feathers and causes the eyes to appear red or pink as the blood vessels are the only coloration. Leucisim on the other hand is only a partial loss of pigmentation and typically occurs randomly in patches.

-Kristen

Species	Captain Sam's		Little Bear
	New	Recaps	New	Recaps
Gray Catbird	-	4	-	-
Swamp Sparrow	-	2	-	-
Yellow-rumped Warbler (Myrtle)	3	4	-	-
Northern Cardinal	-	1	-	-

Banding Stats	Captain Sam's	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	3	-	3
# of Recaptures	11	-	11
# of Species	4	-	4
Effort (net-hours)	118.7	-	118.7
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	11.8	-	11.8
# of Nets	22-24	-	22-24

Banding Staff
Aaron Given (CS)
Michael Gamble (CS)
Kristen Oliver (CS)