A Fun Day, but High Hopes for What's to Come

Captain Sam's:

While the birds remained somewhat inactive, Captain Sam's is starting to experience some extremely high tides. It is quite a unique place to be banding and working while walking through a tidal zone. I think it is absolutely beautiful and am looking forward to finding some seaside/saltmarsh sparrows that hopefully come closer as the tides flood in.

As far as birds go, we did have some great captures today. For the first time this season at Captain Sam's, we caught a Cooper's Hawk. This was a hatch-year male that we determined based on wing and plumage. The wing was short and in range for males (remember that males are smaller in raptors), and the teardrop streaking down the breast and flanks is indicative of a young bird. I sprinted after this bird when it was in the net and felt extremely lucky to get to experience one of these birds up close. Truly remarkable!

Other than the Cooper's Hawks, we had a nice push of Northern Parulas today. These colorful warblers are one of the most beautiful songbirds and such a treat to see yet alone band.

Another bird today was a hatch-year male Black-throated Blue Warbler. This little fella had an interesting molt as it had a perfect example of a carpal covert molt limit. Usually, there is a nice molt limit between A1 and A2. However, for this bird, it didn't replace any alulas and instead had a beautiful example of a CC limit. Also, notice the thick black color to the greater coverts that contrast markedly with the adjacent primary coverts. All of these are clues we use in aging species. Examples like this are clear, but usually, it is a much subtler difference in feather color, wear shape, or sheen that we use.

Little Bear:

Today was a much busier day than we had initially thought looking at the projected radars and such! Our first few runs were pretty busy (still mostly Gray Catbirds and Common Yellowthroats) but we managed to catch a few more interesting species like Yellow-billed Cuckoo and Northern Parula. Later in the morning we caught Little Bear’s first Yellow Palm Warbler of the season! It’s not it’s own species but a sub-species of Palm Warbler. We predominantly catch more of the Western Palm Warbler sub-species. At about 10:40 it started to become a little more windy and threatened rain and the birds started flying into the nets less and less. That being said we only caught a little rain and we able to stay open a full 6 hours which hasn’t happened much lately at Little Bear.

Threatening with rain,

A little drizzle came over,

Not closing up yet

-Nate

"Yellow" Palm Warbler

photos by J. Lefever

"Western" Palm Warbler

photos by J. Lefever

Species	Captain Sam's		Little Bear
	New	Recaps	New	Recaps
Yellow-billed Cuckoo	-	-	2	-
Cooper's Hawk	1	-	-	-
Eastern Wood-Pewee	2	-	1	-
White-eyed Vireo	2	1	-	-
Red-eyed Vireo	3	-	3	-
Carolina Chickadee	-	-	1	-
Tufted Titmouse	-	-	1	-
House Wren	-	-	1	1
Swainson's Thrush	1	-	-	-
Gray Catbird	29	3	22	4
Black-and-white Warbler	1	-	1	-
Common Yellowthroat	13	-	21	3
Northern Parula	4	-	3	-
American Redstart	4	-	7	-
Black-throated Blue Warbler	1	-	1	-
Palm Warbler	1	-	6	-
Prairie Warbler	-	1	2	-
Northern Cardinal	1	-	-	-
Indigo Bunting	1	-	2	-
Painted Bunting	-	-	4	2

Today's Banding Stats	Captain Sam's	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	64	78	142
# of Recaptures	5	10	15
# of Species	15	16	20
Effort (net-hours)	155.3	143.75	299.05
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	44.4	61.2	52.5
# of Nets	30	23	53

2021 Fall Cumulative Banding Stats	Captain Sam's	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	2345	1518	3863
# of Recaptures	370	205	575
# of Species	59	52	66
Effort (net-hours)	7028.7	4808.7	11837.4
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	38.6	35.8	37.5
# of Days	52	47	-

Banding Staff

Kristin Attinger (CS)

Kandace Glanville (CS)

Ben Stalheim (CS)

Nate Watkins (LB)

Josh Lefever (LB)