My Field Ornithology Class

My spring term class is over, grades are turned in and now I will try to catch everyone up with the banding activity for May.

The first week of May (2-8) we visited a hawk banding station in eastern Michigan, north of Port Huron, at Lakeport State Park.  Each day, while half of the class spent the day with Dan Miller observing his hawk banding operation, the rest of us ran mist nets around a small wetland in the state park's picnic area.  The park is closed this time of year so we have the grounds all to ourselves (by permission of the park officer).

We were running a total of five nets for about six hours each day.  Weather conditions were cool and alternately sunny and overcast.  It was rather windy all three days which isn't very conducive to successful netting.

Consequently, it was a rather humdrum three days with a lot of waiting around for no birds to show up.  We had a total of 18 individuals of 13 species all of which were new birds.  Warblers were conspicuously absent with a Blue-winged Warbler and a Common Yellowthroat representing the entire family.  A nesting pair of Brown Thrashers were good birds given the overall decline in Brown Thrashers throughout the east.  Lingering White-throated- and White-crowned Sparrows were good for the students to see.  Other than that is was quite slow and even the bird watching was relatively uneventful.

The hawk banding went much better and the students got to see numerous captured Sharp-shinned, Cooper's and Red-tailed Hawks.

Here is the tally:

Northern Flicker  1 N
Black-capped Chickadee  2 N
Ruby-crowned Kinglet  1 N
American Robin  2 N
Gray Catbird  1 N
Brown Thrasher   2 N
Blue-winged Warbler  1 N
Common Yellowthroat  1 N
Song Sparrow  1 N
White-throated Sparrow  1 N
White-crowned Sparrow  3 N
Northern Cardinal  1 N
American Goldfinch  1 N