Is September the new August?

 Captain Sams: 

    Despite August being over we're still feeling the heat at Captain Sam's! The humidity levels have been through the roof these last few days, the last two in the 90-100% humidity. With the rain this week migration forecast maps are showing that the next few days will likely not produce great numbers of birds. That being said very little can stop the force of migration so where we may not have high numbers we could still see some nice diversity with new species perhaps.

    Today this morning while waiting for our first net run we spent some time by the river. Watching the morning flight of species likely coming from the spit and observing the fun critters of the river. I was pleased to spend time watching a blue crab eating a small moon jelly soon to be followed up by the local dolphins. This morning as they cruised by we were able to identify Hook, Koko, and Step based on their dorsal fins!

hot humidity

oxymoronic climate

gives soggy bottoms

- Nate

Little Bear:

Today wasn't expected to be that great. We came out with a high species count than what I originally thought. We had a total of 25 birds and only 7 of them were recaptures. We caught our first of the season for KIBS, Wilson's Warbler and Palm Warbler (western subspecies) and Little Bears first Chuck-will's-widow and Veery!

We almost had a young night heron in our nets during the first net run be it escaped before coming in arms distance from the net. Maybe next time it might stay!

Below I have inserted both an adult and juvenile Green Heron. You can see how different the birds look like compared to each other. I will go in-depth with each photo to explain what to look at. 

adult (top) juvenile (bottom) you can see that the lines showing both the secondary and primary coverts and the secondary and primary feathers are different from each other. The younger bird will have thick white tips compared to the thin white tips that the adults have.

adult (left) juvenile (right)  You can see how the adult has no streaking on the breast compared to the juvenile. The legs are more yellow and if you look closely to the eyes you can see how the adult has more of a redder eye.

Adult (bottom) juvenile (top)
You can see how the adult is more rich in color compared to the dull juvenile. 

Here is a cute photo of the Wilson's Warbler! Check out the cute cap on this young male. So tiny and handsome!

-Kristin 

Species	Captain Sams		Little Bear
	New	Recaps	New	Recaps
Chuck-wills-widow	-	-	1	-
Green Heron	-	-	1	-
White-eyed Vireo	1	-	1	-
Red-eyed Vireo	1	-	-	-
Carolina Chickadee	-	1	-	1
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher	-	-	1
Carolina Wren	-	-		1
Northern Mockingbird	-	1		-
Veery	-	-	1	-
Ovenbird	4	3	1	-
Northern Waterthrush	2	3	2	1
Common Yellowthroat	1	5	1	-
American Redstart	1	1	1	-
Yellow Warbler	-	-	3	-
Palm Warbler	-	-	1	-
Prairie Warbler	2	1	-	-
Wilson's Warbler	-	-	1	-
Northern Cardinal	-	-	1	2
Painted Bunting	3	-	2	2

Today's Banding Stats	Captain Sams	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	15	18	33
# of Recaptures	15	7	22
# of Species	11	16	19
Effort (net-hours)	132	85.1	217.1
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	22.7	29.4	28.6
# of Nets	30	23	-

2022 Fall Cumulative Banding Stats	Captain Sams	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	574	409	983
# of Recaptures	169	100	269
# of Species	37	33	44
Effort (net-hours)	3562.17	1,644.85	5,207.02
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	21.8	30.9	24.0
# of Days	26	18	-

Banding Staff

Aaron Given (CS)

Kristin Attinger (LB)

Nate Watkins (CS)

Katie Serba (CS)
Brendan Wang (LB) 

Aiden Place (CS)

Maia Nguyen (LB)