Rain & Recaps

Captain Sam's:

We had to delay our opening a little due to a potential rain cloud coming over us. During that time, I did notice some passerine flocks flying overhead that may have very well be Yellow-rumped Warblers or warblers in general coming in for a landing after a long night of migration. We will be expecting numbers of Yellow-rumps (AKA butter-butts) to increase as we head into November. Little Bear experienced some of this today. We did pull in a proportionately high amount of recaptures, which has been the trend lately.

-- Dan E.

Little Bear:

After sitting around a bit while a dawn rain shower to passed over us, we got all of our nets opened and settled in for another not-too-busy morning. The birds had a few surprises in store for us though. On our first net check, we had a Black-throated Blue Warbler, always a nice bird to see and our first in a little over a week. We had a few unexpected recaptures too. A hatch-year male Downy Woodpecker that we banded back in early September stopped by again, as well as a late-staying Northern Waterthrush. The vast majority of Waterthrushes have already flown south towards their tropical wintering grounds, but this particular bird is still working on putting on fat. Since banding it last week, its gained 2 grams, increasing its weight by about 11%. We caught some older birds too- a Gray Catbird that was banded in 2018 and a Carolina Wren who's been a regular at the station since 2016. 

Adult Carolina Wren- banded as a hatch-year in 2016,
meaning it had its 4th birthday some time earlier this year

A bit later in the morning, we had the treat of catching our first sizeable flock of Yellow-rumped Warblers. This becomes increasing common later in the season, and it was a great surprise to suddenly come upon 10 birds all in the same net. Despite the continually poor migration conditions that we've been coping with lately, we can hope for more Yellow-rumps to gradually arrive on the island to brighten up our mornings. 

--Josh

Species	Captain Sam's		Little Bear
	New	Recaps	New	Recaps
Downy Woodpecker	-	-	-	1
White-eyed Vireo	1	-	-	-
Carolina Chickadee	-	1	-	-
Ruby-crowned Kinglet	1	-	-	-
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher	1	-	-	-
Carolina Wren	-	-	-	3
Gray Catbird	6	7	7	8
Brown Thrasher	-	1	-	-
Eastern Towhee	1	-	-	-
Northern Waterthrush	-	-	-	1
Common Yellowthroat	1	-	5	-
Northern Parula	1	1	-	-
Black-throated Blue Warbler	2	-	1	-
'Western' Palm Warbler	-	1	1	-
'Myrtle' Yellow-rumped Warbler	2	-	14	-
Indigo Bunting	-	-	-	1
Painted Bunting	1	1	1	-

Today's Banding Stats	Captain Sam's	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	18	29	47
# of Recaptures	12	14	26
# of Species	13	10	17
Effort (net-hours)	116.55	115.0	231.55
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	14.4	37.4	31.5
# of Nets	30	23	-

2020 Fall Cumulative Banding Stats	Captain Sam's	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	3,609	2,126	5,735
# of Recaptures	741	351	1,092
# of Species	67	66	80
Effort (net-hours)	8,365.21	5,504.9	13,870.11
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	52.0	45.0	49.2
# of Days	68	57	-

 

Banding Staff

Aaron Given (CS)
Vincent Weber (LB)
Dan Errichetti (CS)
Kristin Attinger (CS)

Josh Lefever (LB)