[va-richmond-general] update on the prothonotary project at Dutch Gap

As of Saturday, July 19th, I've banded 248 prothonotary warblers at Dutch Gap 
this season, and the total will go a bit higher as there are still a few 
females on eggs at this rather late date.  The season is about one week late 
this year for prothonotaries. The 248 banded consist of 198 young, 12 adult 
males and 39 adult females.  In addition, 9 birds banded as adults last year 
were recaptured this year.  The
foreign recovery referred to in my last email update turned out to be bird 
banded as a nestling on May 31st, 2002 by graduate student of Charlie Blem's at 
his Deep Bottom site. It was caught by me this year at a Dutch Gap box, raising 
a family of four nestlings.

On Sunday July 13th Bob Mulvihill and Mike Lanzone of the Carnegie Museum's 
Powdermill Banding Station in Pennsylvania accompanied me around Dutch Gap in 
the canoe.  Using an elaborate camera setup in the canoe they were able to 
photograph a good sampling of adult female plumage and the olive and white 
juvenal plumage of nestlings that were nearly ready to fledge.

On Monday July 14th we continued the work on land with mist nets. We captured 
12 prothonotaries and two yellow-throated warblers at one location.  
Remarkably, 11 of the prothonotary warblers already had bands. Nine of them 
turned out to be young birds which had been banded by me as nestlings on dates 
ranging from 5/24 to 6/14 of this year.  They looked a lot like adult females 
at first glance.  The nine included
three sibling pairs. Seven of the nine had come from nest boxes between 1/3 and 
1 mile away and from all directions around the 4-mile Dutch Gap loop. This 
experience and subsequent close observation suggest that this area (along the 
water's edge between the 1 and 1.5 mile markers) may be an important staging 
area for young prothonotaries as they complete their pre-migration molt, 
establish independence, and begin
exploratory dispersal in search of a suitable site to which they may return 
next year as breeding adults.  As to the other two pronthonotaries that already 
had bands, one was an adult male which my records show was a parent of one of 
the sibling pairs referred to above.  The other turned out to be another 
foreign recovery from the Deep Bottom site!  It had been banded as a nestling 
by the same graduate student of
Charlie Blem's, some time after 5/26 of this year, had dispersed 5 miles from 
its natal site, and joined the aforementioned mixed-brood flock at Dutch Gap.

Needless to say, Bob, Mike and I had quite a morning, and they came away with 
many fine photographs of the variations that are to be found in the first 
pre-migration plumage of young prothonotaries.  A good number of the 
photographs taken will appear in the pages of the first volume (covering the 
wood warblers) of their Photographic Guide to the Aging and Sexing of North 
American Birds, under contract with Princeton
University Press.

The unanimous view of all three of us was that Dutch Gap is a special place.

Bob Reilly

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