Thought folks might enjoy today's banding results from Kiptopeke, as reported by the Coastal Virginia Wildlife Observatory's resident bander, Jethro. His email to the Va. listserv appears below. It's a very good time of year for a visit to Kiptopeke, especially right after a cold front! Jethro always extends a warm welcome to visitors. He bands 7 days a week, starting 30 minutes before sunrise. As elsewhere, early morning is the time to see the best birds. I noted, however, that Arun Bose, in his visit to Bandy Field this morning, has Jethro beat on several species! Bob va-richmond-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ----- Original Message ----- From: Jethrorunco@xxxxxxx To: va-bird@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Cc: rjreilly@xxxxxxx Sent: Tuesday, September 26, 2006 4:00 PM Subject: Kiptopeke banding 9/26:Nashville& Connecticut Warblers, Red-breasted Nuthatch Howdy all, Today was a much better day and one I have been waiting for for a while. We had a lot of good birds and a lot of GRAY CATBIRDS. We ended the day with 230 birds, our biggest day of the season, so far. Some of the better birds banded today include CONNECTICUT WARBLER (and I also saw my first out-of-hand Connecticut in the trees also!), BLACKPOLL WARBLER, NASHVILLE WARBLER, BLACK-THROATED GREEN WARBLER, RED-BREASTED NUTHATCH, GRAY-CHEEKED THRUSHES, and WOOD THRUSHES. There were a lot of thrushes around to day and we ended up banding a total of 32 thrushes! Not to be over looked, we banded 14 species of warblers today as well. It was a beautiful day! We also had lots of people at the station today as well, over 75 visitors! They all picked a good day to be here! The most common bird banded today was hands down (or purple in our case) was GRAY CATBIRDS. We ended up banding 110 of them. Anyway, I do hope there are still many birds around tomorrow!!! Here is the days list from 9/26: American Redstart 15 Nashville Warbler 1 first of the season Prairie Warbler 1 Magnolia Warbler 6 Black-throated Blue Warbler 15 Black-throated Green Warbler 1 Blackpoll Warbler 3 Northern Parula 4 Common Yellowthroat 6 Western Palm Warbler 1 Black-and-white Warbler 2 Northern Waterthrush 1 Connecticut Warbler 1 third of the season Ovenbird 11 Eastern Wood-pewee 1 Acadian Flycatcher 2 two in one day even! Red-eyed Vireo 9 Ruby-crowned Kinglet 1 Red-breasted Nuthatch 1 first of the season Indigo Bunting 4 Veery 11 Gray-cheeked Thrush 12 wow! Swainson's Thrush 7 Wood Thrush 2 Song Sparrow 1 first of the season Gray Catbird 110 yikes! Yellow-shafted Flicker 1 TOTAL --------------------------------------- 230 if my math is right! I do hope to have a few left overs tomorrow, but I am pretty sure it will not be anything like today. But I can always hope right?!? Cheers, Jethro Runco Coastal Virginia Wildlife Observatory