100,000 Birds Banded!

 CAPTAIN SAMS

Migration slowed down a little bit last night as we only banded 63 new birds today.  Additionally, we had a season high 34 recaptures with more than half of those being Common Yellowthroats.  

I started banding on Kiawah Island back in 2009.  Over the last 16 years, I have embarked on several long-term banding projects that span the seasons, and cover a variety of important habitats and taxa.  These projects which continue to this day include fall migration banding, winter songbird banding, winter "marsh" sparrow banding, summer/winter Painted Bunting banding, and Wilson's Plover banding.  Today we hit somewhat of a banding milestone with the 100,000th bird banded across about 160 different species!  It turned out to be a Common Yellowthroat which is no surprise as we have banded about 20,300 of them.  On average, I we band about 10,000 birds per year so stay tuned until the year 2039 when we reach the next milestone - 250,000 birds.

We had a couple of interesting recaptures today.  One was a Northern Waterthrush that had a tracking device (radio transmitter) on its back.  The tracking device is called a nanotag is part of a large scale migration tracking program call Motus.  This system uses a series of automated receiving stations to detect birds fitted with nanotags as they fly within range of the station's antennas.  I learned that this particular Northern Waterthrush was banded and fitted with its transmitter on September 8th in New Jersey and was most recently detected at a receiving station in coastal Virginia on September 20th.  

The other recapture was a Common Yellowthroat.  I submitted the band number to the USGS Bird Banding Lab, but it appears that the bander has not submitted their data yet.  That is no surprise as this bird was a juvenile which mean it was only banded in the last few months.  

-Aaron

LITTLE BEAR

Today was a nice relaxing day after a few days of over 100 birds. We ended our day with a total of 40 birds and only 6 of them were recaptures. We didn't add any new species but we captured another Cape May Warbler today. We are also started to get adult Painted Buntings that have completed their molts or almost finished molting. We captured a nice looking after hatch year male Painted Bunting. We really admired this bird and captured a few photos as shown below. It seems like we will have a few slow days ahead of us, which will allow us to work on repairing our nets and getting ready for the next big push!

Painted Bunting (after hatch year, male)

-Kristin

Species	Captain Sams		Little Bear
	New	Recaps	New	Recaps
Traill's Flycatcher	-	-	1	-
White-eyed Vireo	4	3	-	-
Red-eyed Vireo	4	-	-	-
Carolina Wren	-	1	-	-
Gray Catbird	10	1	9	1
Brown Thrasher	1	-	-	-
Veery	1	1	-	-
Northern Waterthrush	1	1	2	-
Black-and-white Warbler	-	2	-	-
Common Yellowthroat	23	18	15	1
American Redstart	2	-	-	-
Cape May Warbler	1	-	1	-
Northern Parula	1	-	-	-
Black-throated Blue Warbler	2	-	-	-
Yellow Warbler	-	-	2	-
Palm Warbler (western subspecies)	9	2	-	-
Prairie Warbler	2	-	2	-
Northern Cardinal	-	3	-	1
Painted Bunting	2	2	2	3

Today's Banding Stats	Captain Sams	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	63	34	97
# of Recaptures	34	6	40
# of Species	17	9	19
Effort (net-hours)	179.2	112.1	291.3
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	54.1	35.7	47.0
# of Nets	32	26	58

2024 Fall Cumulative Banding Stats	Captain Sams	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	1,735	1,093	2,828
# of Recaptures	381	281	662
# of Species	52	52	65
Effort (net-hours)	6,042.0	3,372.6	9,414.6
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	35.0	40.6	37.0
# of Days	38	30

Banding Staff

Aaron Given (CS)

Kristin Attinger (LB)

Natalie Miller (CS)

Lisa Viviano (CS)

Noah Nei (LB)

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