Painted Bunting - male
Photo by Bill LaFramboise
On Thursday, we returned to PB62. It had been two years since we had been here so there were many unbanded birds. In addition, nearby "natural" or vegetated lots had been cleared so maybe they had moved here for shelter and food. We banded a whopping 34 new Painted Buntings. We also recaptured 2 from two years ago. Incidental captures included 6 Northern Cardinals, a Blue Jay. and a remaining Chipping Sparrow.
Blue Jay
Photo by Bill LaFramboise
But the best news of all was a recapture that totally surprised us in so many ways. In the net we saw color bands but no split band. If you've been following all along you know that all of the color banded buntings we band have gotten either a split black/white band or a yellow/green one. It could have just lost the split one but when we looked it up in our data the band number didn't match any of ours. Yes, another recapture from elsewhere,
recaptured 10 year old Painted Bunting
The new reporting site for banded birds at the Bird Banding Laboratory (BBL) is now almost instantaneous! We submitted the band number and got a warning - "caution check data - bird or band is old". Well, the data was fine so we submitted it.
The bird was banded July 1, 2009 near Seabrook Island, SC. The data said that it was aged to have been hatched in 2008. We recaptured a ten year old Painted Bunting! He was in very good shape so hopefully he lives on. Looking at age records determined by banding the oldest Painted Bunting was 12 years old. The oldest we had recaptured before was 8. There is a record of one in captivity that was 17 but definitely did not have the same living conditions.
Painted Bunting total to date is 323. Two or three more sites to go in the next week.
Next scheduled Possum Long Banding will be on April 10. Nets go up at sunrise.
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