Thursday, September 11, 2008

Banding News From Last Weekend

Well it's taken me a while to update the blog but it was a busy and interesting weekend of catching birds. On Saturday we held a public program at Ritter Farm which is a regular banding site for us. We had anticipated a good day and with the weather cooperating we had lots of visitors and the bird variety we caught was nice for a fall day. We banded 20 birds of 13 species with a number of species being typical migrants for early September. Species netted were:

Trail's Flycatcher
Nashville Warbler
Black-capped Chickadee
Common Yellowthroat
Least Flycatcher
Red-eyed Vireo
Song Sparrow
Downy Woodpecker
Hairy Woodpecker
Gray Catbird
Baltimore Oriole
Northern Cardinal
American Robin

There was not one species that we caught in big numbers. Our most common capture was the chickadees with 3 individuals netted.

Sunday was a whole other story. We were banding at a friends property in Wisconsin and had such good numbers of birds present, we had to furl the nets after almost every run just so we could catch up on banding what was already in bags.



Highlights of the day included this Great Crested Flycatcher that Birdchick lured into a new net set with her iPod. She had quite a bit of luck with the new net placement also catching an Ovenbird and a Northern Waterthrush.



Most of our captures however were near the feeder stations by the house. We only caught a single individual of some species (like the Tufted Titmouse above) but if one species typified the day it was American Goldfinches. Of the 53 birds we handled on Sunday, 28 were goldfinches. We became very good at recognizing age and sex of goldfinches by the end of the day. The best catch of the day was a goldfinch that was already banded and it was NOT our band. This is the second foreign retrap goldfinch that Mark and I have ever handled. The number has been reported to the Bird Banding Lab and when we find out any info I'll make sure to post it here.



Typical Titmouse behavior is letting banders know how displeased they are with being handled. A little nip before they go must make them feel better.

Totals for Sunday are:
Species (New,Retrap)

Black-capped Chickadee (5, 2)
American Goldfinch (26, 2)
Ovenbird (1, 0)
Northern Waterthrush (1, 0)
Downy Woodpecker (5, 0)
White-breasted Nuthatch (7, 0)
Tufted Titmouse (1, 0)
Hairy Woodpecker (2, 0)
Great Crested Flycatcher (1, 0)

Our friend Amber took some great photos while we banded and I will be posting some of those tomorrow.

4 comments:

Lynne at Hasty Brook said...

Is it just me or are titmouse eyes larger for their heads than other birds?

Anonymous said...

It's very fun to see your bird banding photos! Thanks for posting the link on MN Bird.

Anonymous said...

It's very fun to see your bird banding photos! Thanks for posting the link on MN Bird.

Anonymous said...

Love this site! Thanks,
Mike