A Small Prelude

 CAPTAIN SAMS

With the storms behind us, we banded 50 new birds and 11 recaps of 17 species at Captain Sam's today. To no surprise, Gray Catbirds led the new bird and recap count with 15 new individuals and 5 recaps. After our short day yesterday, we are grateful for all the birds today, including a very elegant Yellow-breasted Chat and a Least Flycatcher! Yellow-breasted Chats have a yellow throat and breast (creative, I know), white spectacles, and a white belly, but they may be hard to spot, hidden in thick vegetation. There are predictions of a pretty busy day tomorrow, so fingers crossed for that! 

Yellow-Breasted Chat (Hatch year, female)

And that concludes my first blog post, byeee y'all.

-Van

LITTLE BEAR

After seeing very little movement on Bird Cast and radar, I was surprised that we got a pretty decent amount of birds today. We ended up with 57 birds, 42 new and 15 recaps of 16 species. Catbirds were our most prevalent bird with 16 captured (8 new, 8 recap) followed by Common yellowthroats with 9 captured (5 new, 4 recap). We also saw a little boost in Eastern Phoebes and Northern House Wrens today with 4 of each captured. We also caught three more First of Season birds! Bay-breasted Warbler, Nashville Warbler, and Ruby-crowned Kinglet. 

Nashville Warbler (Hatch year, male)

I've just received breaking news from Jasmine as she's entering data. One of the recaptured catbirds from today was banded as an after hatch year in 2018, making it at least 9 years old! That's an old cat. 

-Liz  

Species	Captain Sam's		Little Bear
	New	Recaps	New	Recaps
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker	1	-	-	-
Least Flycatcher	1	-	-	-
Eastern Phoebe	3	-	4	-
White-eyed Vireo	-	-	1	1
Red-eyed Vireo	2	-	-	-
Tufted Titmouse	-	-	-	1
Ruby-crowned Kinglet	1	-	1	-
Northern House Wren	1	-	4	-
Gray Catbird	15	5	8	8
Swainson's Thrush	-	-	1	-
Yellow-breasted Chat	1	-	-	-
Ovenbird	-	-	1	-
Northern Waterthrush	-	1	-	1
Black-and-white Warbler	-	1	-	-
Nashville Warbler	-	-	2	-
Common Yellowthroat	11	3	5	4
American Redstart	1	-	3	-
Cape May Warbler	1	1	3	-
Magnolia Warbler	1	-	-	-
Bay-breasted Warbler	-	-	2	-
Black-throated Blue Warbler	-	-	1	-
Western Palm Warbler	9	-	6	-
Prairie Warbler	1	-	-	-
Northern Cardinal	1	1	-	-
	-	-	-	-

Today's Banding Stats	Captain Sams	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	50	42	92
# of Recaptures	12	15	27
# of Species	17	16	24
Effort (net-hours)	155.6	127	282.6
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	39.2	44.9	42.05
# of Nets	33	28	61

2026 Fall Cumulative Banding Stats	Captain Sams	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	3,300	1,817	5,117
# of Recaptures	471	210	681
# of Species	67	63	82
Effort (net-hours)	8,338.1	5,651.25	13,989.35
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	45.2	35.9	40.55
# of Days	56	49

Banding Staff

Michael Gamble (CS)

Liz Held (LB)

Olivia DeMarchi (CS)

Jasmine Fu (LB)

Aiden Gifford (LB)

Van Truong (CS)

Nick Schleissmann (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.