Sunday, October 18, 2009

Cool and Windy Sunday Morning


After yesterday's great banding, I was excited to get out again this morning to see how many more birds we could catch. One of the biggest enemies of banders is wind and I woke up to a very windy morning. Luckily my net lanes are protected from all but the strongest winds. Today was going to test that.

I was not disappointed. Sure, we spent a lot of time picking leaves out of the nets but by 11:30 we had 20 birds of 8 species with some surprises. First surprise - Yellow-rumped Warblers still around in good numbers. This beauty posed for us in the sunlight just before release.



Another real shock were 2 Tennessee Warblers. These girls should have been out of here already. We also hoped for a Palm Warbler or an Orange-crowned Warbler but missed on those.



A nice bonus today were 3 different sparrow species including a chunky Fox Sparrow. I hadn't seen any of these around my feeders for a while.



This is the time for White throats but we only had one today as opposed to many yesterday. This is a great example of how habitat can influence captures.



Song Sparrow is a common breeder around here but this fellow should be far south of here by now.

Totals for the day are as follows:

Tennessee Warbler (2)
Ruby-crowned Kinglet (1)
Yellow-rumped Warbler (7)
Black-capped Chickadee (1 new and 2 retraps)
Song Sparrow (1)
White-throated Sparrow (2)
Fox Sparrow (1)
American Robin (3)

Not sure how many days are left when we can get out but we're going to try our site in Wisconsin next Sunday.

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