Common Ground Dove!

 CAPTAIN SAMS

It was a slow morning with 24 new birds and 7 recaptures of 10 species. It is that time of the fall where we are mostly capturing wintering birds. There are still a handful of Neotropical migrants but they have mostly moved through, and now we wait for larger numbers of Yellow-rumped Warblers to arrive. This will be our third push after Common Yellowthroats and Gray Catbirds.

-Michael

LITTLE BEAR

It was a very pleasant fall day out at Little Bear and we ended the morning with 27 newly banded birds and 12 recaptures of 12 species. Our most captured species this morning was Yellow-rumped Warblers, of which we caught 12. As Aaron wrote in the blog the other day, as compared with the last several years we've caught lots of Yellow-rumps early in the season this year, which is a good sign that we'll catch many more before the season is up, which I am excited for! Asides from the Yellow-rumps, we also managed to capture a Common Ground Dove! This little guy was very exciting for everyone and a lifer for Aiden. Common Ground Doves have experienced a steep drop in numbers in the Kiawah Island area since 2018 when a January storm brought freezing temperatures and over 5 inches of snow to Charleston, making it the third-largest snowfall in one day in the city's history. Its proposed this storm was devastating to the population of Common Ground Doves for several reasons. Firstly, unlike songbirds, doves have fleshy feet that are more susceptible to frost bite damage and as their name suggests, these doves spend their lives foraging on the ground. It's likely several inches of snow covering their foraging grounds and freezing temps caused a die off in the ground dove population here, which had already been experiencing a steady decline in recent decades. The fall banding season in 2018 brought no Common Ground Dove captures and very few have been caught in the years since then, making today's capture especially exciting. It was once thought they were extirpated from Kiawah Island, but with two caught in the last two years, there is hope their population is slowly growing. 

Common Ground Dove (hatch year male)

We determined this guy to be a hatch year based on the molt limit in the secondaries. Note the contrast in color of the inner flight feathers with some black (replaced formative) and others brown (retained juvenile). Based on the bluish gray feathers to the head and nape and iridescent blue/purple spots in the wing coverts we know this fella is a male.

Common Ground Dove wing (hatch year male)

-Olivia

Species	Captain Sam's		Little Bear
	New	Recaps	New	Recaps
Common Ground Dove	-	-	1	-
Yellow-billed Cuckoo	1	-	-	-
Eastern Phoebe	1	-	-	-
Ruby-crowned Kinglet	1	-	-	-
Northern House Wren	-	-	2	-
Gray Catbird	5	7	6	5
Savannah Sparrow	-	-	1	-
Song Sparrow	2	-	1	-
Swamp Sparrow	3	-	1	-
Orange-crowned Warbler	1	-	-	-
Common Yellowthroat	5	-	2	3
American Redstart	1	-	1	1
Blackpoll Warbler	-	-	-	1
Western Palm Warbler	-	-	-	1
Yellow-rumped Warbler (Myrtle)	4	-	12	-
Northern Cardinal	-	-	-	1

Today's Banding Stats	Captain Sams	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	24	27	51
# of Recaptures	7	12	22
# of Species	10	12	16
Effort (net-hours)	156.3	137.75	294.0
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	19.8	28.3	24.8
# of Nets	33	28	61

2026 Fall Cumulative Banding Stats	Captain Sams	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	4053	2405	6456
# of Recaptures	582	361	943
# of Species	80	73	94
Effort (net-hours)	9812.6	6813.4	16,626.0
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	47.2	41.2	38.8
# of Days	65	58

Banding Staff

Aaron Given (CS)

Michael Gamble (CS)

Liz Held (LB)

Olivia DeMarchi (LB)

Jasmine Fu (CS)

Aiden Gifford (LB)

Abby Burke (CS)

Erin Rogers (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.