November 3, 2015

At first blush this day looks a little dismal with only 3 new Gray Catbirds banded.  Most of the story is with the 4 recaptured birds we caught.

Since our road trip to the Yellow Rail and Rice Festival with its banding workshop (see post), we are looking at wings differently.  Young Gray Catbirds do show a molt limit (a way we age birds) and our wing photo shows that this is an adult bird (no molt limit).  There is silver edging to the small feathers just above the outer flight feathers.

Gray Catbird

Photo by Jane Wiewora

We recaptured a Gray Catbird, a Common Yellowthroat, a Northern Cardinal and the Gray-cheeked/Bicknell's Thrush.  We were able to measure one other aspect of this bird and will be submitting it to various people to see if we may still be able to determine which one we had.  Some characteristics are in the overlap zone including the new measurement we made.  However most of the other measurements were only in the Bicknell's range.  Identity still to be determined.

The photos of two of the recaptures:

Common Yellowthroat

Photo by Jane Wiewora

Gray-cheeked/Bicknell's Thrush

Photo by Jane Wiewora

Next regularly scheduled banding:  November 10.  Nets go up at 6 am.