It's Raining Cats... or just one Catbird?

 Captain Sams:

Work at the station concluded early today due to an imminent threat of rain. Before closing down in a hurry, we captured a total of 21 new birds and 10 recaptures. As has been typical of the past week, a large majority of new birds today were our friendly neighborhood Common Yellowthroats, making up a whopping 43%! We also recaptured a Gray Catbird that has shown up in our nets for the last three days, what a feisty kitty! The incoming rain also led to a lull in the day, giving us an opportunity to replace one of our nets and fix another. 

Tomorrow is looking to be extraordinarily more busy than today, and we are excited for what the day might bring!

-Matt

Little Bear:

Today was a little better for us than the past few days. We ended our day with a total of 28 birds. 24 of them being newly banded and 4 recaptures. We enjoyed the slight breeze and cloud coverage during the first part of the morning. We watched the storm come in and ended up getting rained on before we left. Our highlight of the day was catching 2 Eastern Towhee babies. I have been excited to catch them over the past week and can't wait to catch them more. It is fun to see their development, going from a small weight and getting larger, but also seeing them go from the juvenile plumage to getting their plumage that helps us determine the sex of the bird. 

 I am hoping tomorrow will have some more good birds and I'll be hoping for a new species soon!

-Kristin 

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 Sams		Little Bear
	New	Recaps	New	Recaps
White-eyed Vireo	-	-	-	1
Red-eyed Vireo	2	-	1	-
Carolina Chickadee	-	1	-	-
Gray Catbird	-	1	-	-
Wood Thrush	-	1	-	-
Northern Mockingbird	2	-	1	-
Eastern Towhee	-	-	-	2
Ovenbird	-	1	-	-
Northern Waterthrush	-	2	5	-
Common Yellowthroat	9	2	6	-
American Redstart	3	-	-	-
Yellow Warbler	-	-	4	-
Black-throated Blue Warbler	-	1	1	-
Palm Warbler (western subspecies)	1	-	1	-
Prairie Warbler	2	-	2	-
Northern Cardinal	-	1	1	1
Painted Bunting	2	-	2	-

Today's Banding Stats	Captain Sams	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	21	24	45
# of Recaptures	10	4	14
# of Species	14	12	17
Effort (net-hours)	115.2	97.5	212.7
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	26.9	28.7	27.0
# of Nets	32	25	57

2023 Fall Cumulative Banding Stats	Captain Sams	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	686	409	1095
# of Recaptures	254	128	328
# of Species	39	42	50
Effort (net-hours)	4822.55	2534.05	7356.6
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	19.5	21.2	20.1
# of Days	32	23	-

Banding Staff

Aaron Given (CS)

Kristin Attinger (LB)

Brittany Holliker (CS)

Matt Hixson (CS)

Camille Blose (CS)

Wentao Yang (LB)

Natalie Miller (LB)