November 10, 2015 - tale of the tails

When we birded Evergreen Cemetery recently our good friend there said that she hoped she wouldn't see a Yellow-rumped Warbler.  To her, that meant the end of migration.  Migration might be over but Robin recently had a Summer Tanager in her yard, the Painted Buntings are still arriving, and Palm Warbler numbers should still increase.

Our first bird of the day was a recapture Gray Catbird and soon after Nancy Price brought a Yellow-rumped Warbler from the nets at the pond.  We ended up with 2 Yellow-rumps, another new catbird as well as a Palm Warbler.  It was fairly quiet on the property.  It is still very hot and humid (sorry folks where it is colder - I guess we shouldn't complain) and it seem like some cooling would keep more birds moving about.

Instead of wing photos today we took two tail photos.  First is the new Gray Catbird which had a lot of lighter gray on the outer margin of the outer tail feathers.  We do not see this on every bird.  Like the photos in the last couple of sessions, this bird had silver edged feathers above the outer wing feathers indicating an adult bird.

Gray Catbird

Photo by Nancy LaFramboise

The other is the second Yellow-rumped Warbler.  There are very large dark centers edged in blue on the small feathers below the yellow rump.  It also had no molt limit and retained some blue head feathers from this past summer.  This indicates an adult male bird.

Yellow-rumped Warbler

Photo by Nancy LaFramboise

Next regularly scheduled banding:  November 17.  Nets go up at 6 am.