Captain Sam's:
Knowing there was a chance of a busy day, I still gave Kristin the day off. She deserved it! Kandace and I had our work cut out for us but efficiently processed 128 birds today (113 new birds and 15 recaptures of 18 species). Most of what we captured today were Common Yellowthroats and Gray Catbirds with a sprinkling of other expected late September species such as Palm Warblers, Red-eyed Vireos, and American Redstarts. A hatch-year male Summer Tanager was the highlight of the day, unfortunately, he did not cooperate for a photo.
As we head into October, I reflected on the first month and a half of the season thinking that we had a relatively slow start. But to my surprise this has actually been the second best start to a season since we began banding daily in 2012. The average number of birds banded up to this point in the season is 1,726 birds with the highest coming in 2017 when we banded 2,461. So far this year we have banded 1.918 birds. The lowest was in 2018 with only 1,086 birds banded prior to October. October is usually our busiest month so we are looking forward to see what else will come.
-Aaron
Little Bear:
We were greeted by a warm and humid morning for the last day of September, but were delighted to hear a decent number of flight calls overhead while opening our mist nets. Before we even went on our first check, we extracted 3 birds from the net closest to our banding table; always a good sign for a busy day. And it turned out to be our second 100+ bird day of the season at Little Bear. We captured and processed 110 total birds today, just a few less then our season high of 119. Over half of our newly banded birds were Common Yellowthroats and Gray Catbirds, but we also caught two first-of-season species. We had a Least Flycatcher (uncooperative for pictures) and an early Yellow-rumped Warbler. As we go into October, Yellow-rumps will gradually replace Common Yellowthroats as our most abundant warbler species but for today it was a nice surprise!
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| "Myrtle" Yellow-rumped Warbler |
Our most photogenic bird of the day was a Yellow-billed Cuckoo, one of my favorite birds.
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| Yellow-billed Cuckoo |
Another highlight of the day was when Nate wrangled a Glass Lizard, also commonly referred to as 'legless lizards'.
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| Glass Lizard |
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-Josh
| Species | Captain Sam's | Little Bear | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New | Recaps | New | Recaps | |
Yellow-billed Cuckoo | 1 | - | 2 | - |
Eastern Wood-Pewee | 3 | - | - | - |
Least Flycatcher | - | - | 1 | - |
White-eyed Vireo | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 |
Red-eyed Vireo | 3 | - | 3 | - |
Tufted Titmouse | 1 | - | 1 | - |
House Wren | 2 | - | 2 | - |
Gray Catbird | 35 | 10 | 29 | 2 |
Brown Thrasher | - | 1 | - | - |
Swainson's Thrush | - | - | 3 | - |
Northern Waterthrush | - | - | 2 | - |
Black-and-white Warbler | 1 | - | 1 | - |
Common Yellowthroat | 46 | 2 | 33 | 3 |
American Redstart | 3 | - | 6 | - |
Cape May Warbler | 3 | - | - | - |
Black-throated Blue Warbler | 4 | - | 2 | - |
Palm Warbler | 7 | - | 12 | - |
Yellow-rumped Warbler | - | - | 1 | - |
Prairie Warbler | 1 | - | 1 | - |
Summer Tanager | 1 | - | - | - |
Northern Cardinal | - | - | - | 1 |
Blue Grosbeak | - | 1 | - | - |
Indigo Bunting | - | - | 1 | - |
Painted Bunting | 1 | - | - | 1 |
| Today's Banding Stats | Captain Sam's | Little Bear | TOTAL |
|---|---|---|---|
| # Birds Banded | 113 | 102 | 215 |
| # of Recaptures | 15 | 8 | 23 |
| # of Species | 18 | 19 | 24 |
| Effort (net-hours) | 177.0 | 138.0 | 315.0 |
| Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours) | 72.3 | 79.7 | 75.6 |
| # of Nets | 30 | 23 | - |
| 2021 Fall Cumulative Banding Stats | Captain Sam's | Little Bear | TOTAL |
|---|---|---|---|
| # Birds Banded | 1,918 | 1,151 | 3,069 |
| # of Recaptures | 254 | 150 | 404 |
| # of Species | 56 | 52 | 65 |
| Effort (net-hours) | 6,010.2 | 3,896.4 | 9,906.6 |
| Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours) | 36.1 | 33.4 | 35.0 |
| # of Days | 43 | 38 | - |
Banding Staff
