We held our regular monthly banding program at the Lowry Nature Center in Carver Park Reserve near Victoria, MN today and despite the cold and wind had a slow but productive day.
It's always nice to be able to work in a beautiful setting and the maple trees today were quite lovely.
As I said the biggest problem we had today was the wind. We were restricted to using only Potter traps which tends to lower the number of birds we handle. We ended the session with 12 birds of 5 species which was better than I thought we might do.
Today's list:
Black-capped Chickadee 4
Dark eyed Junco 5 (3 new, 2 retraps)
American Goldfinch 1
White Crowned Sparrow 1
White breasted Nuthatch 1
The interesting catches of the day included this very young male Northern Cardinal.
The bird must have been a relatively late hatch (second or even third brood). The dark bill should be light by now.
A bird we don't catch very often was this White-crowned Sparrow. A really beautiful bird in the hand.
A close-up shows nice detail of it's head.
And just to prove that winter is right around the corner, we had lots of Dark eyed Juncos around the feeders including this nice dark gray male.
The plan is to try and do some banding Sunday morning as the winds are supposed to diminish and the temps should be a bit warmer. I'm still able to get into the field right up until it snows as long as there are birds around. Sparrows are here in good numbers and last week 2 very late Parula Warblers were seen near a lake in Minneapolis. You never know what might show up so keep looking up.
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