Banding at the Vestaburg Station: 10/10/10

Wow, if I could only band once during October I guess I picked the right day!  I was only open from 8 until 11 and I got a grand total of 48 birds of fifteen species of which 41 were new, four were recaps and two were unbanded.  I pretty much got every late season migrant I've come to expect out there with the exception of red-breasted nuthatch, although I heard a few.  I was a little surprised at the faint showing of white-throated sparrows given how noisy they were being.  However, as it was, the number of birds that I got had me swamped.

So, we caught three red-bellied woodpeckers.  That is only two shy of the total number of red-bellied woodpeckers I've ever caught at the bog.  Not because they are uncommon, but because they tend to stay up high.  One was a recapture that was originally banded 25 August of '08 as an HY bird.  The two new individuals were HY birds born this summer.  This is evident in these photos which show the bright ruby-red eye of the adult recapture (bottom) and the duller red-brown eye of the young bird (top).

It was a terrific day for golden-crowned kinglets.  We had twelve for the day with eight of them in one net during the first round.  Here are nice examples of a female (top) and a male (bottom).

   

Hermit thrushes made a good showing with 8 new birds and one escapee.  Including this individual which nicely exhibited the buffy tips of the secondary coverts that are found on HY birds.  This allows them to be aged in the fall of their birth year and the spring after.

This orange-crowned warbler, along with the yellow-rumped warbler we caught are regular late fall warblers. Like many of the rest of the October migrants they are not headed to the tropics but to the Tennessee valley south.  While it is rarely visible through binoculars, here you can see the characteristic for which the orange-crowned is named.

Along with the white-throated sparrows that are moving through in big numbers right now (I hear them all over my neighborhood in the mornings) was one of my favorite sparrows.  Partly because the fox sparrow is such a bruiser (it takes the same band size as a cardinal) and partly because it is so pretty.

And finally, as a portend of things to come, this dapper male dark-eyed junco let's us know that winter is not too far away.

Here's the tally:

Red-bellied Woodpecker  2 N,  1 R

Downy Woodpecker  1 R

Blue Jay  1 N

Black-capped Chickadee  4 N,  2 R

White-breasted Nuthatch  1 N

Brown Creeper  1 N

Ruby-crowned Kinglet  2 N

Golden-crowned Kinglet  12 N,  1 U

Hermit Thrush  8 N,  1 U

American Robin  2 N

Orange-crowned Warbler  2 N

Yellow-rumped Warbler  1 N

Fox Sparrow  2 N

White-throated Sparrow  3 N

Dark-eyed Junco  1 N

That will conclude things for the year.  The rest of my October weekends are busy with other activities that prevent me from getting out again.  This makes this the year with the lightest fall banding schedule on record.  Hopefully 2011 will be less hectic.  Stay tuned for updates from the winter American Kestrel study which will begin in January.  And then before you know it, it will be spring again.

Hope to see you out there.