A Bear-y Good Day and Unknown Traill's

Captain Sams:

Overcast skies and gusty winds made for a pleasantly cool and unfortunately quiet day at Captain Sam's today. We captured a total of 17 birds, with 10 recaptures making up the most of that number. Amongst those recaptured birds was a gorgeous adult female Painted Bunting, who treated us with remarkable sheens of color across some of her feathers. 

We were also pleasantly surprised by our first Empidonax flycatcher of the season, which provided a teaching opportunity to those of us who had not taken precise measurements used to identify them before. Our specific individual was narrowed down to being an Alder or an Eastern Willow Flycatcher, but specificity was not possible after reviewing our measurements, leaving our individual as a Traill's Flycatcher. The station also caught its' second Red-eyed Vireo of the season today, a bird we are all always happy to see in the hand!

Hatch Year Red-eyed Vireo

- Matt

Little Bear:

Today was the first day we banded at Little Bear! Due to the wind we had to shut down a few nets early, but we still managed to catch some interesting individuals. We caught our first Common Yellowthroat of the season. In addition to this, we also caught 2 birds previously banded in 2020, a Carolina Wren and an Eastern Towhee. Another cool catch was a female Painted Bunting that was originally caught in 2019!

An after-hatch-year female Painted Bunting (originally caught in 2019)

An after-hatch-year male Eastern Towhee (originally caught in 2020)

A hatch-year male Common Yellowthroat

- Natalie

Note:  All banding, marking, and sampling is being conducted under a federally authorized Bird Banding Permit issued by the U.S. Geological Survey’s BBL

Species	Captain Sam's		Little Bear
	New	Recaps	New	Recaps
Traill's Flycatcher	1	-	-	-
White-eyed Vireo	-	1	-	-
Red-eyed Vireo	1	-	-	-
Carolina Wren	-	-	3	1
Eastern Towhee	-	-	-	1
Northern Waterthrush	-	-	2	-
Swainson's Warbler	-	1	-	-
Common Yellowthroat	-	-	1	-
American Redstart	-	1	1	-
Prairie Warbler	-	1	1	-
Northern Cardinal	-	6	6	2
Painted Bunting	3	2	1	1

Today's Banding Stats	Captain Sam's	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	7	15	22
# of Recaptures	10	5	15
# of Species	8	8	19
Effort (net-hours)	166.3	100.7	267.0
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	10.2	19.9	13.9
# of Nets	32	23	55

2023 Fall Cumulative Banding Stats	Captain Sam's	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	147	15	162
# of Recaptures	79	5	87
# of Species	23	11	34
Effort (net-hours)	1068.9	100.7	1169.6
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	21.1	19.9	41
# of Days	9	1	-

Banding Staff

Aaron Given (CS)

Kristin Attinger (LB)

Brittany Holliker (LB)

Matt Hixson (CS)

Camille Blose (CS)

Wentao Yang (CS)

Natalie Miller (LB)