March 8, 2016

With the hope of migrants, we are seeing new birds and still have winter visitors. We captured a few birds and like the last sessions, we recaptured some.

Early on we had 2 green Painted Buntings at the pond.  It is always fun to have our 2 projects intersect.  If you haven't found our Painted Bunting project, look at the pages to the right side and find topics including our 3 seasons, encouraging Painted Buntings, and more.

(Hoping for photos)

We also banded more Gray Catbirds.  As common as they are, they each seem to show us something.  They are a great bird for teaching as they are strong and big enough to handle easily.

Gray Catbird

Photo by Bill LaFramboise

This photo, though not from today's session, proves the point.  This is a bird that was born last summer.  The tips of the tail are ok but just in from the tip something happened.  Then the rest of the tail grew fine.  The tail of young birds grows all at once.  So the "something happened"  is likely lack of food.  Was this the runt who got fed last?  Was there bad weather that kept food supplies low for a while?  We don't know, but the pattern of growth here added to our assessment of the age of this bird.  

Our possible migrant (or soon to migrate away) was a Black-and-white Warbler.

Black-and-white Warbler

Photo by Jane Wiewora

We recaptured the Ovenbird we caught last week.  That makes us wonder if it used the property all winter.  Also we had a Common Yellowthroat that we banded in the fall.  It is very likely that it has used the pond all winter as its refuge.

Next session:  Remember the time change.  Nets go up at 7 am.