Let's Have a Chat

 Captain Sams:

Today was a beautifully cool day, however slow with birds. A hatch-year male Yellow-breasted Chat was a first of the season for this station. This individual exhibited an eccentric molt and a stark contrast between black and gray across the face, showing us the age and sex. There were a variety of individual species caught including an Ovenbird, Downy Woodpecker, and Prairie Warbler. Keep those fall feelings coming!

Hatch-year Male Yellow-Breasted Chat

-Camille

Little Bear:

Today was a great day! Even though we did not catch a lot of birds today, we still had a fantastic catch of the day. We captured yet another Belted Kingfisher! This one was in the exact same net as the last one, net 5. I didn't think we would catch another one so soon! After we all came back from our first run with only a few birds, this allowed us to take a longer look at this cutie! After looking at this bird and aging it. We determined that this bird was a hatch year female. Based on the amount of rufous that was on the flanks over ruled this young bird a female. We compared the R1 on the tail to the books to help us determine the age on the bird. Comparing to the one we caught 2 days ago this bird had more black to the center of the tail, which made this a younger bird. 

Based on the image below, you can see that this bird has the rufous flanks.  Check out the previous blogs here to see more Belted Kingfisher photos and comparison. 

I'm excited to see if we will catch more this season!

Hatch Year Female Belted Kingfisher

-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
Belted Kingfisher	-	-	1	-
Downy Woodpecker	1	-	-	-
Traill's Flycatcher	-	-	1	-
White-eyed Vireo	-	1	-	-
Red-eyed Vireo	1	-	1	-
Carolina Chickadee	-	-	1	-
Carolina Wren	-	-	-	3
Yellow-breasted Chat	1	-	-	-
Ovenbird	-	1	-	-
Northern Waterthrush	3	1	5	-
Common Yellowthroat	-	-	1	-
Prairie Warbler	1	-	1	-
Northern Cardinal	1	-	-	1
Painted Bunting	2	-	2	-

Today's Banding Stats	Captain Sams	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	10	13	23
# of Recaptures	3	4	7
# of Species	10	10	14
Effort (net-hours)	168	130	298
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	7.7	13.1	20.7
# of Nets	32	25	55

2023 Fall Cumulative Banding Stats	Captain Sams	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	259	130	389
# of Recaptures	124	51	175
# of Species	27	23	33
Effort (net-hours)	2550	1017.1	3567.1
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	15	17.8	32.8
# of Days	18	9	27

Banding Staff

Aaron Given (CS)

Kristin Attinger (LB)

Brittany Holliker (LB)

Matt Hixson (CS)

Camille Blose (CS)

Wentao Yang (LB)

Natalie Miller (CS)