Prologue:
On Sunday we achieved a blogging milestone with our 1000th blog post since 2012! The KIBS blog has been amazing endeavor that has provided a wealth of information on bird banding, bird ID, molt, and more. It has also been a very helpful banding diary for me as I can look back and see what happened on any day over the last 10 years. This blog would not be possible without all of the creative and educational content produced by all of banding assistants that I have had over the years. There are some true gems in our collection. I hope that this blog has been a valuable resource and we will continue to make it as entertaining and informative as possible.
-Aaron
Captain Sams:
Very strong winds made for a short banding session this morning. Several nets were not opened and after 3 net rounds we only managed to catch one bird - a recaptured Downy Woodpecker. So I made the decision to shut down for the day and with Kristin and Nate's help we headed to the east end and removed the bird nesting signs from the beach.
Despite not having any cold fronts in August this year, I felt that we still had a decent start to the season. I was curious so I crunched some numbers going back to 2015. We banded 284 birds in August this year. Compared to previous years, this year was actually the 2nd worst August since 2015. Alternatively, Little Bear had its second best August with 172 banded.
Winds will be shifting to the northwest tonight which is usually good for us so I am expecting more birds in the nets tomorrow and hopefully a good start to September.
-Aaron
Little Bear:
Despite having strong winds that were at the edge of Little Bear's threshold for banding, we headed out to the station to see what we could muster. The wind forced us to keep some of the nets closed but fortunately things did calm down a little after sunrise, and we were able to catch 5 birds during our short session. Our captures were of 5 common species, with the most interesting being another Traill's Flycatcher, which kept us occupied while we took all the wing measurements to try to identify it to species. Fortunately our individual today was short-winged and it fell out of range for Alder, making it a pretty safe bet for Willow Flycatcher. Willow is the more expected migrant along the coast, and while it feels good to make a probable ID of one of these birds in the hand, we'll still report it as a Traill's Flycatcher to the bird banding lab since the differences are so slight.
The slow capture rate this morning definitely felt like a 'calm before the storm' type of moment; with the wind forecasted to shift from SW to NW overnight, we are looking forward to it being much busier tomorrow.
-Josh
| Species | Captain Sam's | Little Bear | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New | Recaps | New | Recaps | |
Downy Woodpecker | - | 1 | - | - |
Traill's Flycatcher | - | - | 1 | - |
Red-eyed Vireo | - | - | 1 | - |
Carolina Chickadee | - | - | 1 | - |
Common Yellowthroat | - | - | 1 | - |
Northern Cardinal | - | - | - | 1 |
| Today's Banding Stats | Captain Sam's | Little Bear | TOTAL |
|---|---|---|---|
| # Birds Banded | 0 | 4 | 4 |
| # of Recaptures | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| # of Species | 1 | 5 | 6 |
| Effort (net-hours) | 36.7 | 58.6 | 95.3 |
| Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours) | 2.7 | 8.5 | 6.3 |
| # of Nets | 21 | 18 | - |
| 2021 Fall Cumulative Banding Stats | Captain Sam's | Little Bear | TOTAL |
|---|---|---|---|
| # Birds Banded | 284 | 175 | 459 |
| # of Recaptures | 98 | 34 | 132 |
| # of Species | 34 | 26 | 40 |
| Effort (net-hours) | 2211.7 | 1167.1 | 3378.8 |
| Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours) | 17.3 | 17.9 | 17.5 |
| # of Days | 17 | 12 | - |
Banding Staff
