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Archived Postings

July 24, 2006 – July 30, 2006

July 24 to July 30, 2006 We’ve been busy down there at the banding station. The great banding we experienced last week continued for most of this week with another 489 birds banded. The banding total for the opening two and a half weeks of fall monitoring is just under 1100 birds. Unfortunately, rain late in the week forced the banding operation to come to a grinding halt. The experts claim that this poor weather will continue well into next week. Whether the large passage of birds will continue or begin to slow down once the rain clouds clear remains to be seen. With such a great start to the fall banding, and still two months of monitoring remaining, it should turn out to be a great fall season. I’ve heard of some crazy busy banding days that have occurred at the LSLBO in the past, but never personally experienced one. This week I had my chance. We banded 203 birds on July 25th. That’s a lot of banding. When it gets that busy, only the most critical information is gathered from the birds. After each bird is banded and identified, only the age and sex is recorded. In the business we call this power banding, or the “ring and fling.” All other measurements become less important because there are still 50 birds hanging beside you and more on their way in from the mistnets. The welfare of the birds is our top priority; you want to process birds as quickly as possible while maintaining the integrity of the data collected. Things definitely go a lot faster when there are two amazing people madly extracting birds from the nets. Through all that, the only new species of the year to be captured was a downy woodpecker. For the first time this fall, a house wren and a purple finch were also capture in the nets. The three banders at the LSLBO have now been working together for three months. After three months we start retelling the same stories. It’s a little scary when the story is just as good as the first two times you’ve heard it. At times like these, we look forward to other sources of entertainment. Being birdwatchers we are thrilled when that entertainment comes from the birds. This time it was provided by a young and very ambitious sharp-shinned hawk. Sharp-shinned hawks are relatively small forest hawks, they have long wings and tails allowing for quick navigation through the trees, but their body size is only slightly larger than a robin. A common raven is easily twice the size of a sharp-shinned hawk. A raven would make a feast for a sharpie, but they won’t go down that easily. Out of nowhere, the sharpie swooped in after the raven. The raven hardly noticed and casually flew away. Now the chase was on. The sharpie pursued the raven, using every ounce of effort and flying skill it had to stay inches away from the ravens back. But the raven just flew on, dodging the odd attack, sometimes giving a squawk. After the third swoop attempt by the sharpie, our reaction changed from “what are you doing?” to “I think he might pull it off.” As quickly as it started it ended. The raven continued to ignore the poor sharpie, and the sharpie moved on with life, probably out looking for a meal that is more manageable and won’t fight back.

2010