FOS: Northern Flicker, Wilson's Warbler and Wood Thrush

Captain Sam's

We had another good day at Captain Sam's with 171 new birds and 16 recaptures of 24 different species.  We captured the first Northern Flicker (in fact we got two) and Wilson's Warbler of the season.  Northern Flickers are present around the banding station in the fall and winter but are seldom captured in the nets.  They are a large woodpecker, and because our nets are designed to capture smaller birds, they have a tendency to bounce out of the nets.

Northern Flicker (Second-year, female)

Woodpeckers have a complex molt strategy and can have multiple generations of feathers within the same feather tract.  Because of this, we are able to age most woodpeckers with a little more precision than other songbirds.  In the fall, second-year birds will have a mix of replaced and unreplaced primary coverts like in the photo below.  Notice that the outer two primary coverts are much darker than the inner ones.  In hatch-years, all the primary coverts would be uniform and brownish like the inner five feathers in the photo below.  Alternatively, if the feathers were uniformly dark, we would be able to age this bird as an after-second year, making it at least 3 years old.  

Northern Flicker wing (Second-year, female)

The winds have shifted a bit from the northwest (last night) to the west (tonight).  The current radar is showing good movements of birds along the coast and inland.  A westerly wind should bring us birds more birds that are migrating more inland as they will be pushed toward the coast.

-Aaron
   


Little Bear

Another busy day at Little Bear brought us 109 new birds and just 4 recaptures of 22 species. Common Yellowthroats continue to be abundant, but we also had a surprising number of White-eyed Vireos and our first-of-season Wood Thrush. Among the other usual species, we also caught one Worm-eating Warbler, and one very drab hatch-year Cape May Warbler, two species we had earlier in the season but haven't seen in a few weeks.

Wood Thrush (hatch-year, sex unknown)

A comparison of eye color on these two White-eyed Vireos. The hatch-year (left) has a dull, gray eye, while the after hatch-year (right) has the bright "white" eye that gives this species its name.

-Hannah

Species	Captain Sam's		Little Bear
	New	Recaps	New	Recaps
Common Ground-Dove	-	1	-	-
Northern Flicker (Yellow-shafted)	2	-	-	-
"Traill's" Flycatcher	1	-	-	-
White-eyed Vireo	10	-	17	-
Red-eyed Vireo	10	1	2	-
Carolina Chickadee	-	1	-	1
Tufted Titmouse	-	-	1	-
House Wren	2	-	5	-
Carolina Wren	-	-	-	1
Veery	2	-	-	-
Swainson's Thrush	4	-	3	-
Wood Thrush	-	-	1	-
Gray Catbird	17	4	8	-
Baltimore Oriole	-	-	1	-
Ovenbird	4	1	-	-
Worm-eating Warbler	-	-	1	-
Northern Waterthrush	1	-	-	1
Black-and-white Warbler	3	-	1	-
Common Yellowthroat	86	1	42	1
American Redstart	16	3	7	-
Cape May Warbler	1	-	1	-
Northern Parula	1	-	1	-
Yellow Warbler	-	1	1	-
Magnolia Warbler	2	-	-	-
Black-throated Blue Warbler	5	-	3	-
Palm Warbler (Western)	-	-	9	-
Prairie Warbler	3	-	4	-
Wilson's Warbler	1	-	-	-
Northern Cardinal	-	2	-	-
Indigo Bunting Painted Bunting	- -	- 1	1 -	- -

                                                 

Banding Stats	Captain Sam's	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	171	109	280
# of Recaptures	16	4	20
# of Species	24	22	31
Effort (net-hours)	150.8	110.0	260.8
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	124.0	102.7	115.0
# of Nets	26	20	46

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