Caught in our own Net of Disbelief

Captain Sam's: 

It was a nice, cool morning, but it was much quieter than yesterday. However, there was no shortage of Gray Catbirds or Common Yellowthroats. We did have some fun surprises like a beautiful male adult Painted Bunting, a Gray-cheeked Thrush, and our first-of-season Yellow-throated Warblers. The pair of Yellow-throated Warblers was really interesting because each one was a different subspecies, which we could tell by the color of the lores (the area at the front of the supercilium between the eye and base of the bill). The dominica subspecies has a yellow lore, while the albilora subspecies has a white lore. The next couple days are predicted to be pretty big with lots of birds migrating now that the storm is fully over, so hopefully we'll continue getting more first-of-seasons or maybe just hundreds of more catbirds.

Yellow-throated Warbler (yellow-lored)
Setophaga dominica dominica

Yellow-throated Warbler (white-lored)
Setophaga dominica albilora

-Katie 

Little Bear:

Today was our first day opening up Little Bear after the storm, unsurprisingly there are dead palm fronds and lots of flooding across the entire station. We set all the nets back up yesterday and were able to open this morning with little to no adjustments which was great! Moving through the water and those adjustments made for a later opening time than normal but it didn't seem to affect our capture rate for the day. This is my first day back out at this end of the island in some time but boy howdy what a warm welcome this was!

First of all we had some wonderful temperatures not to mention a mostly overcast sky making conditions prime for banding. We heard/saw as many interesting things as we got in the nets I'd say. We had a ton of Tree Swallows over us all day today (approximately 200), we heard and saw two Dickcissels flying overhead as we were prepping the banding table, and even had a Common Ground Dove fly right past the banding table! 

I'd say our pace for birds caught was steady today but I was not prepared for the few crazy species we got! 

First off the Connecticut Warbler! Our run was fairly slow that go we had birds but nothing like that, when I met up with Brendan on the net run he had just pulled the bird out, I hadn't seen it yet, and he looks intensely at me and just says "dude". Instantly I knew it had to be good. We didn't catch one last year so this was a new bird for me. Not only that but Aaron had texted me this morning about an individual that was seen at Fort Moultrie the other day. Always hoping but never would I have actually expected it!

The day continued on and we were thinking about closing, we went on one run, banded what we had and then went out to close the nets up for the day. When I reached net 2 I heard a kingfisher rattling but thought it was flying overhead until I saw this giant bird in the net! I rushed over so excited to get this bird out, this is my first time handling one since 2016 and this is the first time with the mindset and eyes of a bander. The excitement didn't stop there,, at the end of the net there was another warbler, passed it off as a Northern Waterthrush until I got closer and realized it was a Swainson's Warbler... I got my radio out basically yelling/laughing in disbelief as I tell Brendan the news. It was an incredible day back at this end of the island, three amazing birds is special so I'll share three haikus in celebration.

Use R1 to age,

cells playing paint by numbers,

intricate patterns

Quandaries in the net,

How much luck for one station,

Three birds for Pyle

Christ, Swainson's Warbler

Dick Filby do you copy,

The bird's in net two

- Nate

Species	Captain Sams		Little Bear
	New	Recaps	New	Recaps
Yellow-billed Cuckoo	-	-	1	-
Belted Kingfisher	-	-	1	-
Downy Woodpecker	-	-	-	1
White-eyed Vireo	1	3	3	2
Red-eyed Vireo	5	-	-	-
Ruby-crowned Kinglet	1	-	-	-
Carolina Wren	-	-	-	1
Gray Catbird	19	14	11	3
Gray-cheeked Thrush	1	-	-	-
Yellow-breasted Chat	2	1	-	-
Black-and-white Warbler	2	1	3	-
Swainson's Warbler	-	-	1	-
Connecticut Warbler	-	-	1	-
Common Yellowthroat	27	6	10	1
American Redstart	7	5	2	-
Northern Parula	1	-	-	-
Magnolia Warbler	2	-	1	-
Palm Warbler (Western)	7	-	7	-
Yellow-throated Warbler	2	-	-	-
Prairie Warbler	-	-	1	-
Northern  Cardinal	-	2	-	1
Painted Bunting	1	2	-	5

Today's Banding Stats	Captain Sams	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	98	47	145
# of Recaptures	25	14	39
# of Species	20	18	22
Effort (net-hours)	195	115	310
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	63.1	53	59.4
# of Nets	30	23	-

2022 Fall Cumulative Banding Stats	Captain Sams	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	2069	1,117	3186
# of Recaptures	377	247	624
# of Species	55	51	68
Effort (net-hours)	6464.97	3,115.55	9580.52
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	39.0	43.8	39.8
# of Days	44	35	-

Banding Staff

Aaron Given (CS)

Kristin Attinger (LB)

Nate Watkins (CS)

Katie Serba (CS)
Brendan Wang (LB) 

Aidan Place (CS)

Maia Nguyen (LB)