A Late Hummingbird on a Mild November Day

 Captain Sam's:

Our incredible luck from yesterday sadly did not continue in to today as far as species goes, but we still had a wonderful day out at the station. The temperature was just perfect and it was even mildly overcast, giving us a better chance at catching birds in the late morning. On top of that, I was able to be present for another Field Sparrow at KIBS. I was at Little Bear when they had caught the previous one, and while I've banded many in Texas, it's nice to see the species up close in a different area. 

Another adorable highlight for the day was when a hummingbird ended up in a net. Always a pleasure to see those little ones. Occasionally, hummingbird species that breed in the western US will migrate East (instead of south), and stay coastally through the winter using hummingbird feeders at people's homes. This certainly seems like a late date for a migrating hummingbird, so this little one might be staying around for the winter. As we've stated before, we don't band hummingbirds at KIBS but we checked to make sure it wasn't previously banded and took some measurements and pictures to help figure out which species it is. Fortunately, this hummingbird's dull plumage and wing measurement allowed us to quickly narrow the possibilities to either the more expected eastern-breeding Ruby-throated Hummingbird, or the rare vagrant Black-chinned Hummingbird. In order to differentiate between these two very similar species, we had to age the bird (looked like a hatch-year), then more closely inspect the shape of the bird's flight feathers. 

Hummingbird spread wing- by looking very closely at the shape of the 10th primary (rightmost) and 6th primary (5th from the right), and using the invaluable diagrams of the Pyle Guide, we can surmise that the bird is most likely a hatch-year Ruby-throated.

Hummingbird tail- our bird's rounded tail feathers further confirm Ruby-throated Hummingbird, rather than the pointier tailed Black-chinned Hummingbird

Hatch-year female Ruby-throated Hummingbird

Five buckeyes fly by
A perfect November day
Overcast delight

- Nate

Little Bear:

Despite the wonderful weather this morning, it was a fairly lackluster day at Little Bear. We only caught 7 species, and our total of 38 birds was mostly Yellow-rumped Warblers. We did see 2 Wilson's Snipes land near the station this morning, and we had a surprisingly good shot at flushing one of them into a net. But despite our effort to push it in that direction, it zagged just a few feet to the right! But we still had enough birds to keep us occupied for most of the session, and it was neat to recapture a hatch-year Carolina Chickadee that we banded back on August 23rd, the third day of the season. 

Carolina Chickadee

The biggest highlight of the day for Ben and I was seeing an unexpected new bird fly over the station- a Snow Goose! A few Snow Geese show up around Charleston every winter, but today is pretty early for one of these tundra-breeding geese to be this far south. This is my 4th fall working at Kiawah, but the first time that a Snow Goose made an appearance before the end of our banding season.

-Josh

Species	Captain Sam's		Little Bear
	New	Recaps	New	Recaps
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker	-	1	-	-
Carolina Chickadee	-	3	-	1
Ruby-crowned Kinglet	6	1	4	1
House Wren	-	-	-	1
Carolina Wren	-	-	-	1
Gray Catbird	3	11	3	9
Hermit Thrush	2	-	-	-
Field Sparrow	1	-	-	-
Song Sparrow	1	3	-	-
Swamp Sparrow	1	4	-	-
Orange-crowned Warbler	2	1	2	-
Yellow-rumped Warbler (Myrtle)	26	9	14	2

Today's Banding Stats	Captain Sam's	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	42	22	64
# of Recaptures	33	15	48
# of Species	10	7	12
Effort (net-hours)	168	143.75	311.75
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	44.6	26.4	35.9
# of Nets	30	23	53

2021 Fall Cumulative Banding Stats	Captain Sam's	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	4,185	2,995	7,180
# of Recaptures	1,010	552	1,562
# of Species	90	79	102
Effort (net-hours)	11,491.5	7,642.2	19,133.7
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	45.2	46.4	45.7
# of Days	82	73	-

Banding Staff

Aaron Given (CS)

Kristin Attinger (CS)

Kandace Glanville (CS)

Nate Watkins (CS)

Ben Stalheim (LB)

Josh Lefever (LB)