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Archived Postings

July 31, 2008 – August 6, 2008

Fall migration banding through the first week of August started off quite slow. A nasty weather system parked itself over the region and brought several days of strong winds and heavy rain. Well, it was the August long weekend, so a little rain was to be expected. The mistnets stayed closed for a few days as we waited for weather conditions to become bird catching friendly. We didn’t miss very much since only a few birds were out battling the winds. When the clouds broke and the winds died down migration monitoring resumed with moderate success. Some observed migratory passage of yellow-rumped warblers, yellow warblers, and American redstarts occurred, but the passage was slower than expected after a stretch of stormy weather. Banding totals averaged 30 birds a day, not the most spectacular banding totals. Ovenbirds and American redstarts made up almost half of the 186 birds banded over the week. The fall banding total currently sits at 732 birds, finally beating the 731 birds banded over spring migration. I felt bad for the assistant bander Aurore one day. She was doing a net check and I heard a terrible racket from the net she was working at. I recognized the distinct squawking of a rose-breasted grosbeak. Those birds make a big noise. The squawking went on for some time and I figured she was working on a very tangled bird. Rose-breasted grosbeaks have large and powerful beaks that they use to break seed shells. They try very hard to bite your finger during extraction, and they usually succeed. Their bite packs a pinch and they won’t let go. The bite makes extracting a tangled grosbeak much more interesting and painful. Turns out that Aurore wasn’t working on one tangled rose-breasted grosbeak, she was working on three. Three juvenile males hit the net at the same time. Extracting one grosbeak is usually entertaining because you can say “ouch” just to be dramatic. Extracting three in a row forces the “ouches” to become more meaningful. Adult birds will often use distraction displays to lure potential predators away from their young. The killdeer’s broken wing act is a classic example of this. The parent will flop on the ground pretending to have a wing injury acting as an easy target to a predator. Many songbirds will only aggressively chip at an intruder, but I have seen ovenbirds do a broken wing act. I have now also seen song sparrows do it too. A juvenile song sparrow was trapped in the net and began chipping as it was being extracted. The parents heard its cry and began to panic. One of the parents began moving back and forth under the net doing a broken wing act. I have never seen that display while extracting a young bird before. The funny part about this tale is that a few hours later the same thing occurred, but this time with a Lincoln’s sparrow.

2010