Captain Sam's:
Today at Captain Sam's we expected the day to be much like yesterday was but to our surprise it was slightly more pleasant in temperature and humidity, still quite hot but just not as bad. Thankfully this slight difference along with other forces also allowed us to catch a few more birds than yesterday. That being said we still did have a slightly shorter day than last week. As a nice surprise, I was walking a net run I noticed something green in the top part of one of our nets. On first approach I thought it was a leaf I was going to extract so birds can't see the invisible wall of net, but when I got a little closer I noticed it was actually a Ruby-throated Hummingbird! I've handled this species before but not through the eyes of a bander observing molts and such so it was pretty exciting! Thankfully I've banded Black-chinned Hummingbirds out west and had the skillset to carefully extract this delicate little bird. The bird we caught today was an after hatching year female, meaning she is a year or older in age, sadly we aren't permitted to band these little ones. Some things that pointed to this being an after hatching year (AHY) female was the amount of white in her tail and overall tail shape. In males they're much more pointed/forked with no white, and in hatch year birds the tail looks similar to an adult female but has a more pointed/forked tail. Below I've added a shot of the tail next to one of charts so you can see what we saw. Another thing that initially told me this was an AHY bird was when you look extremely closely at the bill you'll see small marks in the bill called corrugations. In HY birds they continue down more than half the bill and in AHY birds you'll see little to no corrugations. It's always a neat group of birds to look at, under poor light conditions you might see them as dark green to black but in the right light you'll experience the amazing emerald green structured feathers they have. It also inspired me to write two haikus and since I can't decide which one I liked better I'm posting both!
Feathers glimmer green
Paragon of poise
Fly fast Colubris
Wing beats per second
Unrivaled on the east coast
An emerald green sheen
- Nathaniel
Little Bear:
We had an arduous, sweaty, and thankfully short session at Little Bear this morning. The heat and humidity combined for a 'real feel' of 91 degrees by sunrise, and we hoped to at least catch a few birds before undoubtedly having to close early. A couple juvenile Northern Mockingbirds and Carolina Wrens decided to show up in the nets and give us something to do. But overall, it was one of the unavoidable slow and hot days that Little Bear always has early in the season. We're already counting down the days to the predicted shift in winds later next week.
--Josh
| Species | Captain Sam's | Little Bear | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New | Recaps | New | Recaps | |
Red-eyed Vireo | 2 | - | - | - |
White-eyed Vireo | 1 | - | - | - |
Carolina Wren | 1 | - | 2 | - |
Northern Mockingbird | - | - | 2 | - |
Ovenbird | - | 2 | - | - |
Northern Waterthrush | 1 | - | - | - |
Prairie Warbler | 1 | - | - | - |
Northern Cardinal | - | 1 | - | 1 |
| Painted Bunting | - | 1 | - | - |
| Today's Banding Stats | Captain Sam's | Little Bear | TOTAL |
|---|---|---|---|
| # Birds Banded | 6 | 4 | 10 |
| # of Recaptures | 4 | 1 | 5 |
| # of Species | 8 | 3 | 11 |
| Effort (net-hours) | 117.0 | 82.8 | 199.8 |
| Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours) | 8.5 | 6.0 | 7.5 |
| # of Nets | 30 | 23 | 53 |
| 2021 Fall Cumulative Banding Stats | Captain Sam's | Little Bear | TOTAL |
|---|---|---|---|
| # Birds Banded | 249 | 131 | 380 |
| # of Recaptures | 79 | 23 | 102 |
| # of Species | 34 | 24 | 38 |
| Effort (net-hours) | 1795.50 | 832.85 | 2628.35 |
| Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours) | 18.3 | 18.5 | 18.3 |
| # of Days | 14 | 8 | - |
Banding Staff
