I spent Sunday morning trying to catch Sedge Wrens and their young without much luck at Carver Park near Victoria, MN. The nesting season is almost over and the birds are not as responsive to tape calls as earlier in the summer. Lots of young birds present and I also observed an adult carrying fecal sacs from a nest so there are still birds on territory. Other observations included lots of Cormorants flying overhead, Clay-colored Sparrows singing and Meadowlarks hanging out along the telephone wires. I stopped by one of the osprey platforms and took a little video of 3 youngsters hanging out. Here is a short clip.
The weather has been cooler and much drier than normal and you can really tell from the absence of insects. No big swarms of mosquitoes and the deer flies were actually tolerable yesterday.
Last Sunday I got to help with a project to try to determine where Purple Martins move to after they leave their breeding colonies. Researcher Kelly Applegate came down to the colony Mark and I band every year in order to put radio transmitters on 3 birds that will be followed using a mobile receiver.
This is an after second year male that has a transmitter on it's back. This bird will be tracked for the next 3 months or so.
This is a short video showing the process of catching and placing radios on the PUMAs.
The transmitters are quite small as can be seen by comparing it to the toothpick above it on the table. The antenna will trail off the back of the bird between it's tail feathers and should be able to be spotted when the bird is in flight.
The transmitters are attached by first gluing a small piece of cloth to the feathers on the back of the martin and then gluing the transmitter to the piece of cloth.
The glue is a fast acting contact cement so the placement of the radio has to be accurate the first time.
The glue takes about 4-5 minutes to dry so the birds are held until they can be released.
Once the glue is dry the bird is ready to be released. This after second year male was one of the 3 birds processed that day. We also put radios on an after second year female and a second year female.
Orlin S. gets to release the birds from his colony. You can't see the bird but notice the shadow on the ground. All the birds flew well and resumed feeding almost immediately after their release. The white spot on their back where the transmitter is located is easily seen from quite a distance.
Once the birds were released, Kelly entered the radio frequencies from each transmitter into his receiver and began to locate and follow the birds as they flew around the colony site. By the end of this month the birds at this colony will have moved on and then it will be a question of trying to locate them as they gather in large flocks before they head to South America this fall.
Thanks to lots of comments from birders across the land, I can now say that the bird pictured is an immature Clay-colored Sparrow, Spizella pallida. To be honest, we had originally landed on Grasshopper Sparrow when running it through the Robert's key but many of the characteristics are iffy at best (e.g. broad and pointed tail feathers vs. narrow and pointed tail feathers. How broad is broad?) I also have to say that Mark had suggested Clay-colored originally until we started questioning that ID. Other suggestions from comments included Lincoln's, and Vesper. Special thanks go to Bruce Fall and Allen Chartier for their insights. Birders are such a great group of people. So, one more learning experience in the archives. Next banding session will probably teach us something else, and isn't that the way it should be? I'm working on tomorrow's post which will be about putting radio transmitters on Purple Martins last Sunday. It was pretty cool!
So far there have been 4 species suggested for this young sparrow. Below are a group of much better photographs from Amber Burnette, one of our volunteers. I'll let folks look for another day or so and then post what we came up with.
What we thought might be a slow midsummer banding session was actually pretty good - 23 birds of 14 species. Quite the variety. As often happens this time of year we had lots of juvenile birds including the young sparrow pictured below. We spent a significant amount of time running this bird through the key to come to our conclusion. What I'd like to hear is other people's opinions.
What is this bird and why do you think that? You can double click the images to make them larger for a more detailed view.
It was netted on the edge of a large grassland.
It had a buffy throat with a bit of streaking.
The feathers of the back were relatively dark.
The retrices were very pointed and long.
The top of the head had a median stripe.
I'll post our identification and some more photos of this bird later. Until then have fun!
I decided to sneak out to the refuge and see what was around. Being mid-summer it was pretty quiet and allowed me to just sit and watch for a while. The Barn Swallows were busy cruising over the marsh and some young birds were apparent. This beautiful bird didn't mind me at all.
A new research article shows that claims about wildfire danger in Spotted Owl habitat by our previous administration were not accurate. In a newly published article, much of the call to remove timber is shown to be not based on good science. Read the news release here.
On a brighter note, more young Purple Martins are sporting new "bling" that consists of a nice silver band on the right leg and a nice red band on the left leg. I banded 35 more birds today and will do about 40 more tomorrow.
I've had a couple of very nice responses to my RFI about Purple Martin eggs numbers and here is what I know so far.
The typical number of eggs for PUMA is 4-5. Reports of larger clutches document up to 8 eggs in a nest (Bent). Other research shows that:
"DNA parentage analyses revealed that up to 36% of the young raised by yearling parents in a Maryland colony resulted from parasitic laying (pg. 21, Morton et al. 1990)."
Morton, E.S., L. Forman, and M. Braun. 1990. Extrapair fertilizations and the evolution of colonial breeding in Purple Martins. Auk 107:275-283.
So we do know that parasitic laying takes place in Purple Martin colonies. The interesting part now is to watch this nest and see if it is successful.
Mark and I went to a couple of new colonies this morning and in beautiful weather we banded 34 more young Purple Martins. One of the colonies already has both young fledged and flying around and chicks that are no more than 2 days old.
This group of six is about as many as we get in a nest box usually. 4 to 5 is more typical. However...
We found a nest containing 9 eggs. We believe this might be a "dump nest" where a female has deposited her eggs in the nest of another female. This happens in other species but I haven't heard of it in Purple Martins. I'm going to do a little research to see if this is a known behavior in martins.
With a nice week ahead and only a 50-50 chance of rain Tuesday and Wednesday, I hope to get out and see something other than baby Purple Martins for a while. Good Birding everybody!
I haven't posted in a while as it has been a busy start to the summer around here but I did have the chance to get out and do some banding the last three days which is kinda fun. I have a couple of friends who have Purple Martin, Progne subis, colonies and we have been banding young birds there for several years.
Late June and early July are prime banding times in this part of the country so starting on Wednesday I have been banding birds along with my friend Mark. The adults are pretty tolerant as long as we're not too close to the houses. The adults come back right away to feed young after we're done with a house. You can see the main food right now is dragonflies.
I have a bit of video showing activity around the colony while we are there. The weather has been really good the whole time we've banded so the young birds don't get stressed. This is one of the older young that we banded. This bird is probably 21 days old or so. Some are pretty close to fledging. This is the first year of a coordinated effort to color mark birds in order to determine state of origin when found on the wintering grounds.
Starting this year, young martins are being banded with colored bands on their left leg and USFWS bands on their right leg. In Minnesota, all birds will receive a red band with white numbers. The 3 numbers on the red band correspond to the last three numbers on the federal band. We're hoping we will be able to see and read band numbers from a distance. The hope is also to put a couple of radio transmitters on birds from this colony in order to see where they go as they stage in large flocks before starting their southward migration.
So far I have banded 95 birds and Mark has done an additional 103 young. We will go back to these colonies to finish up on birds that weren't ready to be banded yet and we are going to try to band some young at a couple of new colonies where we have spoken to the owners. By mid-July we'll be done and then it will be wait and see as far as return information. We hope that next spring we'll see lots of birds with red bands and maybe even a couple with a different color. Wouldn't that be something?!
