Captain Sam's:
Happy first of November! We had decent numbers today despite a couple surprise rain showers, with 37 new birds and 11 recaptures. Some stand-out captures include another Brown Creeper, a Blue-headed Vireo, and a Savannah Sparrow (a season first for Captain Sam's!). In contrast with the Brown Creeper we caught yesterday, we were actually able to age today's as a hatch-year due to incomplete ossification of the skull. Dan alluded to using the white tips of their primary coverts as aging criteria in yesterday's blog post, but it's difficult to do so when there is no frame of reference. Thus, we were quite excited to be able to compare the wings of these two individuals. As you can see below, the individual with unknown age from yesterday had much more white on its primary coverts than the hatch-year individual from today. This makes us suspect that this feather characteristic may be a way to age Brown Creepers if yesterday's bird was in fact an after hatch year. Whether this is reliable or not, it's fascinating to compare! Maybe we will catch more Brown Creepers before the end of the season to see if it holds up.
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| Brown Creeper of unknown age from 10/31/20. Note the amount of white on primary coverts compared to... |
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| ...a known hatch-year's wing. |
- Sarah S.
Little Bear:
Today was a lot better than the past few days. The wind died down quite a bit allowing us to open all of our nets. We had a total of 48 birds with 7 of them being recaptures. Our highlight today were three Blackpoll Warblers. We did have an unexpected short rain shower today, which was not as fun because it got very muggy after it was done. Pictured below is one of the few Song Sparrows that we captured today that show a great example of a molt limit that can occur in Song Sparrows.
I hope tomorrow, even though the wind is suppose to be high, that the northwest winds tonight will bring in a few good birds!
-Kristin
| Species | Captain Sam's | Little Bear | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New | Recaps | New | Recaps | |
Blue-headed Vireo | 1 | - | - | - |
Brown Creeper | 1 | - | - | - |
House Wren | - | - | 2 | 1 |
Carolina Wren | - | 1 | - | - |
Golden-crowned Kinglet | 1 | - | - | - |
Ruby-crowned Kinglet | 1 | - | - | - |
Swainson's Thrush | 1 | - | - | - |
Hermit Thrush | 2 | - | - | - |
Gray Catbird | 9 | 5 | 10 | 4 |
Brown Thrasher | - | 1 | - | - |
Northern Mockingbird | 1 | - | - | - |
Savannah Sparrow | 1 | - | - | - |
Song Sparrow | - | 1 | 4 | 1 |
Swamp Sparrow | 4 | - | 1 | - |
White-throated Sparrow | - | 1 | - | - |
Common Yellowthroat | 3 | - | 5 | 1 |
Cape May Warbler | - | - | 2 | - |
Blackpoll Warbler | - | - | 3 | - |
Black-throated Blue Warbler | - | 1 | - | - |
Palm Warbler (western subspecies) | 7 | - | 4 | - |
Yellow-rumped Warbler (myrtle subspecies) | 4 | 1 | 8 | - |
Northern Cardinal | 1 | - | 1 | - |
Painted Bunting | - | - | 1 | - |
| Today's Banding Stats | Captain Sam's | Little Bear | TOTAL |
|---|---|---|---|
| # Birds Banded | 37 | 41 | 78 |
| # of Recaptures | 11 | 7 | 18 |
| # of Species | 19 | 11 | 22 |
| Effort (net-hours) | 171.0 | 138 | 309 |
| Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours) | 28.1 | 34.8 | 31.1 |
| # of Nets | 30 | 23 | - |
| 2020 Fall Cumulative Banding Stats | Captain Sam's | Little Bear | TOTAL |
|---|---|---|---|
| # Birds Banded | 3899 | 2,385 | 6,284 |
| # of Recaptures | 814 | 403 | 1,217 |
| # of Species | 75 | 69 | 86 |
| Effort (net-hours) | 9408.8 | 6,253.7 | 15,662.5 |
| Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours) | 50.1 | 44.6 | 47.9 |
| # of Days | 77 | 64 | - |
Banding Staff
Vincent Weber (CS)
Dan Errichetti (CS)
Kristin Attinger (LB)
Sarah Stewart (CS)
Josh Lefever (LB)
