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Archived Postings

July 11, 2005 – July 17, 2005

July 11 to July 17, 2005 I have terrible news this week. We began fall migration monitoring on July 12. Summer is here and many people are out enjoying the weather on their summer vacation. The thought of fall is about the last thing on everyone’s mind, except the birds and, well, ours. Fall migration has not actually begun yet. We start monitoring near the end of the breeding season before birds start migrating so we can cover the entire migration period. Many of the adults are either still in breeding condition or are moulting feathers preparing for migration. Hatch year birds are doing small local movements; we have captured a fair number with very few recaptures, meaning their not staying in the area. Many young are still in juvenile plumage and still need to moult some new feathers before they begin their true migration. The young are starting to move before their parents, giving the true meaning of empty nest syndrome. We will now be banding daily at the observatory until the end of September. 71 birds were banded during migration monitoring this week. American redstarts, yellow warblers, tennessee warblers, white-throated sparrows, and swainson’s thrush have been the most common captures of both adult and young birds. The first rose-breasted grosbeak of the year was banded this week. These birds have enormous beaks used for breaking open the outer husks of seeds. These beaks also provide the means for a painful bite when they get your finger. They also seem to have the ability to turn there heads around at impossible angles (ever watch The Exorcist?) to bite your fingers. One technique used to save fingers is to coax them to bite a twig while attempting to extract them from the nets. They will gnaw on the twig for a bit, then wise up and go back for the fingers. These are one of the few species of birds that can cause fingers to bleed. Overall, rose-breasted grosbeaks are mean, but they are spectacular birds and their attitude makes them that much more interesting. This is a busy time of year because we are still are running the MAPS program. This week we finished the fourth round. Overall, banding at all four sites was slow with about 30 birds captured in total. Not much to report here, except with two rounds left we will begin to see an increased amount of young birds and adult birds moulting into their basic plumages.

2010