Howdy all,
Today was a very interesting day at the banding station. We started the day
not certain that the rain was going to hold off. Well the light rain settled in
early morning but never got heavy enough to close the station. We made much
more frequent net runs when the light rain was falling. As it turned out, it
became a beautiful day on the shore!
So the highlights came in many fashions today. Banding wise, we only caught
28 birds today, a bit depressing because of all the birds we saw today. But the
we did catch one bird that was worth it! On your 12:15pm net run, we caught a
GREEN HERON! It is only the second one ever banded here at Kiptopeke dating
back to 1963. And by chance, the last one banded was all the way back to last
year! So we have now gone back-to-back seasons with a Green Heron. Outside of
that, it was all expected birds.
Bird watching from the banding station itself was actually fabulous today.
During Ernesto, one of the medium sized Sassafras trees next to the banding
station took a hard left and is now leaning at 60 degrees into a clearing. The
tree is full of berries. The first good find in that one tree was from my
intern
Andrew Odell. He found an odd vireo up there. Low and behold a PHILADELPHIA
VIREO! In the mean time, lots of RED-EYED VIREOS, AMERICAN ROBINS, GREAT
CRESTED
FLYCATCHERS, TRAILL'S FLYCATCHER, and VEERYS were feeding in the tree. Then I
spotted a YELLOW-BELLIED FLYCATCHER in the tree. But not to be out done,
Andrew finds a YELLOW-THROATED WARBLER feeding near the tree! As I regret
saying
this, it was my first Yellow-throated Warbler for the shore!! Good job Andrew!
Well, I can't have my intern showing me up! So we continued staring into the
tree when I find our first SCARLET TANAGER of the season. Of course not as
good as a YTWA or a PHVI, it was a nice addition to the list of birds found in
the near toppled tree! Guess the intern wins today!
Sure hope tomorrow holds a lot more for us!
Here are the totals for 9/6:
American Redstart 6
Common Yellowthroat 2
Northern Waterthrush 2
Ovenbird 4
Yellow-breasted Chat 1
Traill's Flycatcher 3
Eastern Wood-Pewee 1
Veery 3
Baltimore Oriole 1
Northern Cardinal 1
Northern Mockingbird 3
GREEN HERON 1
TOTAL------------------------------- 28
Geez, wonder what tomorrow is going to have??
Cheers,
Jethro Runco
