Flicker Friday (on a Sunday)

 CAPTAIN SAMS

It was a bit of a slower day out at Captain Sams, with only 31 birds (20 new, 11 recaptures). We are continuing to see increasing numbers of late migrants such as House Wrens and Eastern Phoebes. Today we only caught two new Common Yellowthroats. This just goes to show that many of the neotropical migrants have already made their way past South Carolina. We will continue to catch some of these birds but it will be in much lower numbers than it was earlier in the season.

We also had our first of the season Song Sparrow today! I am always happy to see some sparrows in the hand, so this was a welcome treat! They are one of the more common sparrows we catch, so we will likely see many more. Hopefully we will get another push of birds later this week!

Song Sparrow (hatch-year, sex unknown)

- Natalie

LITTLE BEAR

Today was a decent day. We ended our day with 1 more bird than yesterday. We ended with a total of 65 birds. Only 16 recaptures which makes 49 of those birds newly banded. We added 2 new species to the station; a Yellow-shafted Flicker and a Song Sparrow! I was pretty excited for the flicker. We have been seeing them more periodically this past week and I was hoping one would find our net. It started out with 2 of them hanging on our tree next to the table, then as I was going through the nets I find on in a net! I was pretty excited to bring it back and show it off. I don't typically get them in the hands and this makes my third flicker I have held in the hand. It has also been a good few years since I last held one (2019 to be exact). 

I am hoping we still get a few left over or some late leavers over the next few weeks before we start to catch only are late migrants. Still holding out for some fun warblers but also I am happy to see the Yellow-rump Warblers start to show up!

-Kristin

Species	Captain Sam's		Little Bear
	New	Recaps	New	Recaps
Yellow-billed Cuckoo	-	-	1	-
Northern Flicker (yellow-shafted)	-	-	1	-
Eastern Phoebe	1	-	4	-
Carolina Chickadee	-	-	-	1
Ruby-crowned Kinglet	2	-	2	1
House Wren	4	-	4	-
Gray Catbird	5	6	22	8
Brown Thrasher	-	1	-	-
Gray-cheeked Thrush	1	-	-	-
Swainson's Thrush	-	-	1	-
Song Sparrow	1	-	2	-
Eastern Towhee	-	-	-	1
Common Yellowthroat	2	2	3	-
American Redstart	-	1	1	-
Palm Warbler (western subspecies)	2	-	4	-
Yellow-rumped Warbler (myrtle subspecies)	1	-	3	1
Northern Cardinal	1	-	-	1
Painted Bunting	-	1	1	3

Today's Banding Stats	Captain Sams	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	20	49	69
# of Recaptures	11	16	27
# of Species	13	16	18
Effort (net-hours)	172.8	119.6	292.4
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	17.9	54.35	32.8
# of Nets	32	26	58

2024 Fall Cumulative Banding Stats	Captain Sams	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	3,512	2,256	5,768
# of Recaptures	677	561	1,238
# of Species	73	69	88
Effort (net-hours)	9,475.0	5,730.6	15,205.6
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	44.2	49.2	46.1
# of Days	58	49

Banding Staff

Michael Gamble (CS)

Kristin Attinger (LB)

Natalie Miller (CS)

Lisa Viviano (CS)

Noah Nei (LB)

Meredith Heather (CS)

Adam Wolf (CS)

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.