It's Raining Cats (Catbirds)

 Captain Sams:

I wasn't expecting a super busy day today.  The radar showed a lot of local movement early in the evening but not that much north of us.  I interpreted that as a lot of the birds we going to leave the area and there would not many birds moving into the area.  I could not have been more wrong!  We banded 246 birds and had 37 recaptures of 18 species.  What made today unique was that of the 246 new birds 199 of them were Gray Catbirds and 20 of the 37 recaptures were catbirds.  By far this is the most Gray Catbirds that we have ever captured in a single day.  

Mixed in with all those catbirds were a couple of first-of-the-seasons - Saltmarsh Sparrow and Northern Flicker.  

Saltmarsh Sparrow

Northern Flicker (male)

Northern Flicker (wing)

A huge thank you to Alexandra for helping scribe data on all those catbirds! 

 -Aaron   

Little Bear:

Today was unexpectedly busier that what I thought it would be. I was thinking our first 2 runs would be just mainly Catbirds, but I wasn't expecting all day! We ended up with a total of 116 birds for the day! Only 14 of those birds were recaptures. When we were super busy trying to push through Catbirds we almost snuck past our FOS Pine Warbler! This little gal was super dull and didn't register in our catbird brains yet. Once I registered that it was new for the year I was really excited to finally get one! Another great surprise that showed up in our nets was KIBS 2nd ever Merlin! This was something I missed out on last year. I am so glad I got to see one in the hand and enjoy how small they are! They are so stinking cute!

Merlin (hatch-year, male)

Wonderful wing shot of the Merlin

This young male was definitely a fighter. Throwing hands (talons) every which way and trying to bite at any given chance. It might have won a few of those battles but not enough between Maia and I. Once banded, we enjoyed a minute with the bird snapping every sassy photo we could and finally got to release this cutie! I think it was glad to be free.

I am also added a photo that Maia snapped of the Pine Warbler below! Check out how dull but yet how cute this little gal is! Even as dull as she looks, she still sports those wing bars that point out her species characteristics.

Pine Warbler (hatch-year, female)

-Kristin

Species	Captain Sams		Little Bear
	New	Recaps	New	Recaps
Merlin	-	-	1	-
Northern Flicker	1	-	-	-
Trails Flycatcher	-	-	1	-
White-eyed Vireo	4	4	-	-
Red-eyed Vireo	2	1	-	-
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher	-	1	-	-
House Wren	2	2	2	-
Carolina Wren	-	1	-	-
Brown Thrasher	1	-	-	-
Gray Catbird	199	20	81	6
Saltmarsh Sparrow	1	-	-	-
Ovenbird	-	1	1	-
Northern Waterthrush	-	-	1	1
Black-and-white Warbler	1	-	-	-
Common Yellowthroat	16	-	7	-
American Redstart	3	5	-	2
Yellow Warbler	1	-	1	-
Black-throated Blue Warbler	4	-	-	-
Pine Warbler	-	-	1	-
Palm Warbler (western subspecies)	2	-	4	-
Northern Cardinal	-	-	1	1
Indigo Bunting	5	1	-	-
Painted Bunting	4	-	1	2

Today's Banding Stats	Captain Sams	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	246	102	348
# of Recaptures	36	13	50
# of Species	18	13	23
Effort (net-hours)	200.9	105.7	306.6
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	140.4	108.8	129.8
# of Nets	30	23

2022 Fall Cumulative Banding Stats	Captain Sams	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	3,053	1,822	4,875
# of Recaptures	611	338	949
# of Species	67	61	81
Effort (net-hours)	7,541.57	3,561.5	11,103.1
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	48.5	60.6	52.5
# of Days	51	42	-

Banding Staff

Aaron Given (CS)

Kristin Attinger (LB)

Nate Watkins (CS)

Katie Serba 
Brendan Wang 

Aidan Place (CS)

Maia Nguyen (LB)

Alexandra Wickson (CS)