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Archived Postings

July 24, 2008 – July 30, 2008

The last week of July must have been a slow week at the LSLBO banding lab because I am having trouble thinking about fun, exciting, and interesting events that took place. That’s not to say that absolutely nothing occurred. We had two days with good migration passage. Yellow-rumped warblers, yellow warblers, blackbirds, bank swallows, black-and-white warblers, American robins, American redstarts, and flycatchers were some of the species that were migrating in good numbers on those days. One day we counted 279 yellow-rumped warblers. But on those days with passage the birds were flying out of the range of the mistnets, leaving low banding totals. For example, only one of the 279 yellow-rumped warblers counted was banded. That one little bird did not adequately represent the migratory population for the day. This drives home the fact that visual observations are as important as banding to be able to derive accurate population estimates. Banding was a slower than we like through the week. We only banded 175 birds. The weather played a role in keeping the birds away from the nets. The week began with daily banding totals between 30 and 40 birds as a stretch of hot, calm, sunny days continued. Then the weather began to change. I will admit that I do not fully understand the dynamics of how changes in pressure systems affect migratory movement. A pressure system began to move in, which triggered migration because birds began to migrate as the hot, dry, calm weather slowly changed into cloudy, cool, windy weather. The following day was extremely windy. We do not catch many birds on windy days. Not only is it difficult for birds to move about in the wind, but the nets billow out. Billowy nets are not effective nets. When the winds dissipated it was back to another day of heavy passage. It was like the nasty weather held up the birds and they were making up lost time. It was a good day of bird watching, but not banding because the birds were too high in the sky once again. The week ended with a day of heavy rain. For the safety of the birds we do not band in the rain. I may be sounding like the week was wasted because we didn’t band a bazillion birds. That’s not the case. We did catch some very good birds. American redstarts reigned supreme in the nets. They made up over a third of all the birds banded. We banded our first Wilson’s warbler of the fall. We also banded two hairy woodpeckers, which, like all woodpeckers, are a handful. The Cape May warbler was the highlight of the week. We expect to see a couple in the nets every fall, but their infrequent occurrences make each one a very nice bird to catch. Finally, a barred owl was spotted near the banding lab early one morning. Even though we didn’t catch it, it reminded me that owl banding season is only a month away, and that has me very excited, indeed.

2010