Captain Sams:
Nate and I had our work cut out for ourselves today with 190 new birds and 10 recaptures. We were busy most of the morning extracting and banding Yellow-rumped Warblers - 87 of them to be exact. We had some other goodies mixed in to like Captain Sams' first Cooper's Hawk and White-throated Sparrow of the season, a few lingering Painted Buntings, and a pair of chunky Black-throated Blue Warblers.
The tide was very high today cresting at 7.8ft (1.3ft above the predicted tide level for the morning). Tides this high cause massive flooding around the banding station burying our trails under more than a foot of water in many places. In situations like this we must be proactive in raising the lower portions of our nets to be above the crest of the tide waters. This amount of water also makes getting around the banding station more difficult and net runs end up taking a lot longer to complete than normal.
It was a gray dreary day with 100% cloud cover and moderate winds. These are the perfect conditions for catching Tree Swallows during migration. We have been talking about Tree Swallows for a while now as they have been swirling around the Spit by the thousands for at least a week now. On days like today when flying insects are not available for them, Tree Swallows will feed on wax myrtle berries. They are one of a handful of species that can take advantage of this abundant food source because they are able to digest the waxy coating that surrounds the seed. We have two nets that are strategically placed at traditional feeding "shrubs" and on days when Tree Swallows are present in big numbers - we will open them up. After our first net run today, I noticed the swallows feeding in one of the shrubs so I ran across the marsh and opened up the far "swallow net", aka SN2. For the next few hours the swallows swirled around the far end of the Spit feeding on other wax myrtles, occasionally flying low over the Kiawah River, or feeding on the seeds of the Spartina grass. As I was making my way around the inundated banding station checking the nets for birds, Nate told me he was "going to the swallow net, they hit it big". By this time we were at peak high tide and there was a lot of water between the banding station and SN2, but Nate made it across quickly and retrieved 66 Tree Swallows!
Kristin and Katie were done banding at Little Bear and Kristin came out to give us a hand with banding all those Tree Swallows (and the 12-15 birds we had from our last net run). It was a great team effort despite some somewhat difficult conditions. Tomorrow's forecast calls for more clouds and wind - so maybe more Tree Swallows!
-Aaron
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| Tree Swallow |
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| Tree Swallow wing (Hatch-year, female) |
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| Tree Swallow (either hatch-year or after hatch-year - I don't remember and can't tell based on the wing photo, male) |
Little Bear:
Little Bear had a different kind of day compared to Captain Sam's. We ended with only 39 birds, 9 of them being recaptures. Luckily we had a great variety of birds though! We ended up catching, a Blackpoll Warbler, Orange-crowned Warbler, and a Pine Warbler. All birds that we captured today were great but I'd say these were the best so far! It was a tad breezy this morning but we managed to run all our nets since it wasn't too bad, but as the day continued it was becoming more persistent. I thought maybe we would catch a flock of Tree Swallows but they missed our nets by only a few yards. So close to the trail and in between 2 of our nets. I was hoping even just one stray would find its way but maybe next time! It was really cool to see them land so close to you without a care in the world because food is such an important thing to them at this point.
Maybe tomorrow will show some more good birds and numbers. I was pretty happy to catch more than just 10 birds!
-Kristin
| Species | Captain Sams | Little Bear | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New | Recaps | New | Recaps | |
Coopers Hawk | 1 | - | - | - |
Downy Woodpecker | 1 | - | - | - |
Yellow-billed Cuckoo | - | - | - | 1 |
Tree Swallow | 66 | - | - | - |
Eastern Phoebe | - | - | 2 | - |
Ruby-crowned Kinglet | 4 | 1 | - | - |
House Wren | 2 | 1 | - | - |
Gray Catbird | 1 | 6 | 4 | 5 |
Eastern Towhee | - | 1 | - | 1 |
Song Sparrow | 5 | - | 1 | - |
White-throated Sparrow | 1 | - | - | - |
Ovenbird | - | - | - | 1 |
Northern Waterthrush | - | - | - | 1 |
Orange-crowned Warbler | - | - | 1 | - |
Common Yellowthroat | 11 | - | 3 | - |
American Redstart | 1 | - | - | - |
Cape May Warbler | - | - | 1 | - |
Blackpoll Warbler | - | - | 1 | - |
Black-throated Blue Warbler | 2 | - | 1 | - |
Palm Warbler (Western) | 6 | - | 3 | - |
Yellow-rumped Warbler (Myrtle) | 86 | 1 | 10 | - |
Pine Warbler | - | - | 1 | - |
Painted Bunting | 3 | - | 2 | - |
| Today's Banding Stats | Captain Sams | Little Bear | TOTAL |
|---|---|---|---|
| # Birds Banded | 190 | 30 | 120 |
| # of Recaptures | 10 | 9 | 19 |
| # of Species | 15 | 16 | 23 |
| Effort (net-hours) | 168 | 91.4 | 259.4 |
| Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours) | 119.1 | 42.7 | 53.6 |
| # of Nets | 30 | 23 | - |
| 2022 Fall Cumulative Banding Stats | Captain Sams | Little Bear | TOTAL |
|---|---|---|---|
| # Birds Banded | 4,484 | 2,708 | 7,192 |
| # of Recaptures | 1,066 | 617 | 1,683 |
| # of Species | 79 | 76 | 93 |
| Effort (net-hours) | 10,578.4 | 5,455.9 | 16,034.3 |
| Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours) | 52.5 | 60.9 | 55.4 |
| # of Days | 70 | 61 | - |
Banding Staff
Brendan Wang
