Where are all the birds?

CAPTAIN SAMS

Today at Captain Sam's we had our second lowest capture rate of the season, with 13 birds over 4 hours. Despite the low numbers it's still nice to start the morning by the beach with at least a couple of birds. Today's highlight was another Black-and-white Warbler. These birds are quite pretty despite their lack of bright colors. With no cold fronts in the foreseeable forecast we're unsure when our numbers will improve, but hopefully we have busier days ahead shortly!

Black-and-white Warbler,  AHY,  Male

LITTLE BEAR

We had a little increase in birds today at Little Bear. We ended up with 25 birds total, with 18 new and 7 recaps. This was mostly thanks to the Painted Buntings, of which we had 8 new and 3 recaps. It's nice to see some new birds moving into the area! A few other highlights from today were our local birds, a young Northern Mockingbird and 2 more Blue-gray Gnatcatchers. This brings our Blue-gray Gnatcatcher total up to 4, which I think is exciting after only capturing one all season last year! Our two Gnatcatchers today were different ages, and we happened to catch them in the same round, giving us an opportunity to compare them. The bird on the bottom in the photo is a hatch year bird with a nice limit in the alula feathers. The bird on top is an after hatch year, finishing up her prebasic molt. You can see her molt is nearly complete, she only has two very brown secondaries and alulas left to go. 

-Liz

Top: Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, After hatch year female

Bottom: Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, Hatch year unknown sex

Species	Captain Sam's		Little Bear
	New	Recaps	New	Recaps
Red-eyed Vireo	3	1	-	-
Carolina Chickadee	-	2	2	1
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher	-	-	2	-
Northern Mockingbird	-	-	1	-
Northern Waterthrush	-	-	2	1
Black-and-White Warbler	1	-	-	-
Common Yellowthroat	1	-	-	-
American Redstart	-	-	2	-
Northern Yellow Warbler	-	-	1	-
Prairie Warbler	1	-	-	-
Northern Cardinal	1	-	-	2
Painted Bunting	2	1	8	3
	-	-	-	-

Today's Banding Stats	Captain Sams	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	9	18	27
# of Recaptures	4	7	11
# of Species	7	8	12
Effort (net-hours)	132	109.2	241.2
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	6.8	22.9	15.8
# of Nets	33	28	61

2026 Fall Cumulative Banding Stats	Captain Sams	Little Bear	TOTAL
# Birds Banded	270	118	388
# of Recaptures	108	43	151
# of Species	27	18	28
Effort (net-hours)	2,116	935.6	3,051.6
Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours)	17.9	17.2	17.6
# of Days	16	9

Banding Staff

Aaron Given (CS)

Michael Gamble (CS)

Liz Held (LB)

Olivia DeMarchi (LB)

Jasmine Fu (LB)

Aiden Gifford (CS)

Baxter Shirey (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.