FOS Lincoln's Sparrow and Wilson's Warbler

 Captain Sam's:

After a very productive last 10 days where we averaged more than 100 new birds per day, bird activity slowed down out on the spit.  We only banded 44 new birds but had 24 recaptures which helped to mitigate the relative "slowness".  The Gray Catbird is king right now and is dominating our nets.  So far we have banded 789 of them with the first one banded on 9/17.  We are just past their peak and expect their numbers to begin to taper off a bit in the coming weeks.  Because Gray Catbirds are a common winter bird in SC, we will continue to see new birds for the rest of the season.       

Weekly Capture Rate 2012-2019
Blue line represent the median ("peak" in abundance)

Aging Gray Catbirds can be very straightforward if you know what to look for.  Instead of reinventing the wheel, I am going to pull a classic KIBS blog post from 2013.  This is one of the more popular posts over the years and has been viewed 947 times.  Mattie did a good job in highlighting all of the characteristics that banders can use for aging catbirds.  Click HERE to see the post.  

-Aaron

  

Little Bear:

Today was a great day at LB! We added 2 new birds to the KIBS species list making it a total of 88. We added a Wilson's Warbler and a Lincoln's Sparrow. Last year we managed to not capture a Wilson's Warbler at either site, rendering a bust for the 2020 yearly species list. In even better news, the last Wilson's Warbler that was captured at LB was in 2018! That has been 3 years since the last one was here. CS did capture one in 2019.

As I go through some data and look back to see if we are on track as of today over the years. You can say that LB is pushing ahead compared to last year!

On October 20th 2020:

Captain Sam's had 3,571 newly banded birds.

Little Bear had 2,069 newly banded birds. 

On October 20th 2021 (this year):

Captain Sam's has 3,342 newly banded birds

Little Bear has 2,479 newly banded birds

It's a dead give-away that LB is pushing ahead with 400 birds! I'm hoping this continues for both sites as we continue on our fall extravaganza of bird migration.

Pictured below is the FOS Wilson's Warbler and Lincoln's Sparrow. Also enjoy my fall themed nails to kick off the fall season :)

Hatch-year female Wilson's Warbler

Lincoln's Sparrow

As a bonus for the day I have also uploaded below some great shots of butterflies that I have captured today! The goldenrods are at full bloom this week and it has been butterfly/bug central at the moment.

Long-tailed Skipper

Long-tailed Skipper

Gulf Fritillary

-Kristin 

Species	Captain Sam's		Little Bear
	New	Recaps	New	Recaps
Yellow-billed Cuckoo	-	-	1	-
Eastern Phoebe	-	-	1	-
House Wren	4	1	6	-
Ruby-crowned Kinglet	4	-	2	-
Gray Catbird	19	21	23	3
Eastern Towhee	-	-	1	-
Swamp Sparrow	-	-	4	-
Lincoln's Sparrow	-	-	1	-
White-crowned Sparrow	-	-	-	1
Common Yellowthroat	8	2	6	3
Northern Parula	1	-	-	-
Black-throated Blue Warbler	-	-	1	-
Cape May Warbler	-	-	2	-
Palm Warbler (western)	1	-	2	-
Yellow-rumped Warbler (myrtle)	4	-	2	-
Wilson's Warbler	-	-	1	-
Indigo Bunting	-	-	1	-
Painted Bunting	2	-	4	1
Northern Cardinal	1	-	-	-

Today's Banding Stats	Captain Sam's	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	44	58	102
# of Recaptures	24	8	32
# of Species	9	17	19
Effort (net-hours)	159	119.6	278.6
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	42.8	55.2	48.1
# of Nets	30	23	53

2021 Fall Cumulative Banding Stats	Captain Sam's	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	3,342	2,479	5,821
# of Recaptures	590	325	915
# of Species	77	71	88
Effort (net-hours)	8,808.5	6,127.1	14,935.6
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	44.6	45.8	45.1
# of Days	63	58	-

Banding Staff

Aaron Given (CS)

Kandace Glanville (CS)

Ben Stalheim (CS)

Nate Watkins (CS)

Josh Lefever (LB)

Kristin Attinger (LB)