Wednesday, September 2, 2020

Smashing! A Little Bear First!

Captain Sam's:

Today was a really slow day. We started out with a few runs with a good start of birds but it slowly died down as the day progressed on. We had a total of 19 newly banded birds and 11 recaptures. I know I am making this short and sweet but hopefully these next few days we have some more birds trekking in.

Now onto Little Bear's excitement!!

-Kristin

Little Bear: 

Hello again all our intrigued readers! Today we enjoyed a real scorcher out there, but our numbers were actually higher than yesterday even with less net-hours. We caught 22 individuals with only two of those being recaptures. We had 10 species total keeping our diversity up. This time around we were quite lucky and caught a beautiful specimen of the avian world. Lo and behold, the Eastern Whip-poor-will! This was an all-time first nightjar for Little Bear! Only three other Eastern Whip-poor-wills have been caught at Captain Sam's in all of KIBS history. You may have heard this bird's incessant song at night during the spring or summer before. Listen to it in the previous link and familiarize yourself. Now we need to catch a Chuck-wills-widow, which is the expected nightjar at KIBS that is almost an annual capture at Captain Sam's. Nightjars are nocturnal or crepuscular birds that feed on insects or even some vertebrates like frogs. They have an oversized mouth that they can gape wide open to ensure capture or to consume larger prey.

Hatch-year Female Eastern Whip-poor-will (Photo: DE)

Sporting their beautifully camouflaged feathers, we were able to age this individual as a Hatch-year by the cinnamon tipped primary coverts shown by the red arrow. An After Hatch-year Whip wouldn't have buffy or cinnamon tips to its primary coverts.

Hatch-year Female Eastern Whip-poor-will (Photo: DE)

We were able to sex this bird by looking at the color of the tips of the outer tail feathers or retrices. A female, like this bird, has buffy or cinnamon tips where a male would have white tips.

Hatch-year Female Eastern Whip-poor-will (Photo: JL)

Thanks for reading and all the best wishes to you!

- Dan Errichetti






  SpeciesCaptain Sam'sLittle Bear
NewRecapsNewRecaps
Easter Whip-poor-will
--1-
Traill's Flycatcher
11--
White-eyed Vireo
--1-
Red-eyed Vireo
32--
Carolina Chickadee
--1-
Carolina Wren
---1
Ovenbird
11--
Northern Waterthrush    
317-
Black-and-white Warbler
--1-
Common Yellowthroat    
213-
American Redstart
2-2-
Prairie Warbler
4--4
Northern Cardinal    
-2--
Painted Bunting
324-


Today's Banding StatsCaptain Sam'sLittle BearTOTAL
# Birds Banded
19
20
39
# of Recaptures
11
2
13
# of Species
9
10
14
Effort (net-hours)
102
74
176
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)
29.4
29.73
29.55
# of Nets
30
20
-




2020 Fall Cumulative Banding Stats Captain Sam'sLittle BearTOTAL
# Birds Banded
415
169
584
# of Recaptures
159
29
188
# of Species
30
28
36
Effort (net-hours)
2,062.02
898.55
2,960.57
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)
27.84
22
26.1
# of Days1810
-



Banding Staff
Sarah Mueller (LB)
Sarah Stewart (CS)
Vincent Weber (CS)
Dan Errichetti (LB)
Kristin Attinger (CS)
Josh Lefever (LB)


 

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