In the Groove

 Captain Sams: 

Greetings from my comfy plaid chair in my room in our house on Kiawah Island. I just returned home from the beach and the setting sun; the black skimmers were racing by with their bills dipped in the shallows and the clouds were changing color and shape every time I turned my head.

Today began comfortably, with the humidity giving us a bit of a break. We opened the nets and watched the sun rise over the river, as we do just about every morning.

The winds have shifted and slowed down the flow of birds flying into our nets, but we still caught and observed and appreciated 30 avian individuals, including the adult Common Yellowthroat pictured below.

We are a little over a month into our season, and I have greatly enjoyed working and living with our crew. We have been fishing the creeks and ponds, encountering new fish each time we go out. We have been playing a lot of Wingspan, a board game centered around, you guessed it, birds. We enjoy biking down the beach to the spit to watch the shorebirds and the dolphins. I feel very fortunate to be spending my time here and appreciate you all for reading.

-Brendan

   

Little Bear:

Today was quite a slow day for us at LB. We managed to wrangle up to 15 birds! At least 4 of them were recaptures, so that means we are still adding new birds to our list. As the rain seems to stay lingering at the shorelines our water levels out at the station is slowly lowering. Its almost to our ankles! It is nice to enjoy regular boots for a bit instead of trucking around in hip waders, but I do enjoy the extra protection it provides from the bugs though. The herons as seem to show no interest at the moment but hopefully during the next big rain storm or high tides we will see them wonder on back to our station. 

This week seems like it is going to be a little slow, but I hope we have a good day coming up soon. I can't wait to see some new species to add to our list.

-Kristin

Species	Captain Sams		Little Bear
	New	Recaps	New	Recaps
White-eyed Vireo	-	2	-	-
Red-eyed Vireo	-	1	-	-
Blue-grey Gnatcatcher	1	1	-	-
Northern Waterthrush	4	3	4	2
Common Yellowthroat	10	2	1	1
Ovenbird	-	1	-	-
Yellow Warbler	-	-	4	-
Western Palm Warbler	1	-	1	-
Painted Bunting	4	-	1	-
Northern Cardinal	-	-	-	1

Today's Banding Stats	Captain Sams	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	20	11	21
# of Recaptures	10	4	14
# of Species	8	6	10
Effort (net-hours)	127.7	73.6	201.3
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	20.4	20.4	17.4
# of Nets	30	23	-

2022 Fall Cumulative Banding Stats	Captain Sams	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	933	662	1595
# of Recaptures	240	164	404
# of Species	41	40	50
Effort (net-hours)	4519.37	2,283.65	6803.02
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	26.7	36.2	29.2
# of Days	32	25	-

Banding Staff

Aaron Given (CS)

Kristin Attinger (LB)

Nate Watkins 

Katie Serba (LB)
Brendan Wang (CS) 

Aidan Place (CS)

Maia Nguyen (CS)