May 9, 2013 - A Day of Records

After a walk last night with a lot of migrants around and news that the west winds would cease, Nancy Price and I decided to do another banding session.  We were hoping to catch the last big wave of spring migrants.  I'm sure more birds and maybe more species will be passing through but not likely in the large numbers we have had recently.

Today we had several milestones.  We broke the single day total with a whopping 17.   We also topped 100 for the year (107) and now have banded 120 birds since the station opened.

Today I got to band 3 species for the first time.  All pictures on today's post were taken by Nancy Price as I had my hands full of birds!  Many thanks to Nancy for being available, being a talented photographer, and for being such a hard worker.

Common Yellowthroat

Northern Waterthrush

Gray-cheeked Thrush

I thought that Gray Catbirds were gone but we caught and banded one today.  It had a good load of fat so it will have reserves to keep going north.

Ovenbirds were more numerous today - The four we banded doubled Tuesday's amount.

We thought we were going to band a male Northern Cardinal but this one also had deformed legs.  They weren't as bad as the previous bird but I chose to not put a band on in case the thickening of the skin continued.  The Northern Cardinal however was not shy about letting me know his displeasure at capture. 

You can see the beak bite mark on my finger.

Northern Cardinal

The three Common Yellowthroats we banded all went in one net together.  It was a bright display even though two were not as bright as the above male.

Common Yellowthroat

It is sometimes a challenge to identify waterthrushes in the field.  There are several field marks that indicate one over the other but in hand there is another clue - the pattern on the undertail covets is different and this one indicated and supported the identification as a Northern Waterthrush.

Northern Waterthrush from below

The flecked throat also indicated Northern Waterthrush.

Northern Waterthrush

The Gray-cheeked Thrush was fun to process as it was clearly bigger than the Bicknell's Thrush we caught last fall.  Bicknell's and Gray-cheeked Thrushes are very similarly marked but differ in size.  Wing measurements for this bird were too long for Bicknell's and in range for Gray-cheeked.  The emargination (indentations) on primaries (P8 and P7 as well as a small bit on P6) ruled out other thrush species.  

Gray-cheeked Thrush wing

We were so busy we did not get photographs of the American Redstarts, Ovenbirds, the female Black-throated Blue Warbler or the Gray Catbird.  There are photos of these birds on other entries.

Next scheduled banding:   May 14, 2013