FOS: Tree Swallow and Field Sparrow

Captain Sam's
It was a typical November morning out at Captain Sam's with 27 new birds and 21 recaptures of 10 different species. Yellow-rumped Warblers led the way with 14 new ones being banded. Yellow-rumps also made up most of our recaps with 13, 8 of them being banded in previous seasons at KIBS. The highlights of the morning were first-of-the-season's Field Sparrow and Tree Swallow.

The Tree Swallows were swarming in the hundreds looking for some myrtle bushes to drop down on and feed on the berries. Sometimes they will come down on some myrtle bushes that are near our nets, providing us with a net full of swallows. This time, we were more proactive and tried to anticipate where they would come down next, so we set up a net near myrtle bushes that were full of berries. Towards the end of the morning, they started to swarm again and eventually dropped down to this net! Unfortunately, we only caught 2 out of the entire flock but it still was a success!

Field Sparrow (hatch-year, sex unknown)

Tree Swallow (hatch-year, sex unknown)

-Michael

Little Bear 

Thankfully the wind died down a little bit today which allowed Little Bear to resume banding.  We banded 25 new birds and recaptured 9, representing 9 species.  We finally captured our first Sharp-shinned Hawk of the season.  We have been seeing them around the station for the past couple weeks but today was finally the first day one hit the net and stayed.  The Sharp-shinned captured today was an after second-year male.  He was aged by the lack of any juvenile plumage and deep red eye color.  Between hawks banded at the two banding sites, Kristen was able to compile a nice comparison shot of eye color between hatch-year, second-year, and after second-year Sharp-shinned Hawks.            

Hatch-year (Left), Second Year (Center), After Second Year (Right)

Species	Captain Sam's		Little Bear
	New	Recaps	New	Recaps
Sharp-shinned Hawk	-	-	1	-
Tree Swallow	2	-	-	-
Ruby-crowned Kinglet	3	-	2	-
Hermit Thrush	1	1	1	-
Gray Catbird	1	5	1	5
Northern Mockingbird	-	-	1	-
Field Sparrow	1	-	-	-
Song Sparrow	3	-	1	-
Swamp Sparrow	1	1	1	-
Northern Parula	-	-	-	1
Palm Warbler (western)	1	-	-	-
Yellow-rumped Warbler (Myrtle)	14	13	17	3
Prairie Warbler	-	1	-	-

Banding Stats	Captain Sam's	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	27	25	52
# of Recaptures	21	9	30
# of Species	10	9	13
Effort (net-hours)	171.6	95.0	266.6
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	28.0	35.8	30.8
# of Nets	26	17	43

Banding Staff
Aaron Given (CS)
Mattie VandenBoom (LB)
Michael Gamble (CS)
Kristen Oliver (LB)