zondag 4 september 2011

Another slow day

This day was just like yesterday: not too many birds around because of the heat. We trapped a similar amount of birds as yesterday. 47 birds, 30 new spread over 13 species. As the previous two days we closed the nets around 10 'o clock.

Also , there are some cool frogs around our cabin. We have been hearing a few Spring Peepers and also a Green Tree Frog.

The results of today:
Ruby-throated Hummingbird 6 -
Eastern Wood-Pewee 1 -
Acadian Flycatcher 1 -
Traill's Flycatcher 1 -
Least Flycatcher 2 -
Red-eyed Vireo 3 -
Wood Thrush 1 -
Gray Catbird 1 -
Northern Waterthrush 1 -
Common Yellowthroat 2 -
Hooded Warbler 9 -
Canada Warbler 1 -
Northern Cardinal 1 -
Total 30, 13 species

One of the recaps was a nice female Downy Woodpecker.

Eastern Wood-Pewee, hatching year
Traill's Flycatcher, hatching year 
Wood-Pewee's and Traill's Flycatchers can look quite similar eventhough the Pewee is from another flycatcher family called Contopus. On the left there is the Wood-Pewee and on the right the Traill's Flycatcher. There are some clear differences though. 
The size of the legs for example. The Traill's has got pretty long legs in comparison to the Pewee (on the right), whose legs are tiny. Furthermore wing lenght is useful. This Pewee had a wing lenght of 76.5 whilst the Traill's had a wing length of 68. And of course the Pewee looks much darker-grey and has some buffy edging on the rump and lesser coverts.
House Wren, after hatching-year

Most birds go - after they've been banded and processed - into the flight tunnel. All over the world there are only two flight tunnels, which this is one. The other one is situated in Austria. These flight tunnels are used to research how to prevent birds from getting collisions with windows (glass). Therefore several kinds of glass types are being used for this. Right at the end of the tunnel one can find the windows that are being tested. There is a net right in front of the window so that the bird won't hit the window of course ;) Some bird species do well in the flight tunnel and others don't. Hooded Warbler is an example of a birds species that does well in the tunnel. 

After we were done with bird banding me and Brandon did some relaxing in front of our cabin. This delivered us a very confiding Grey Fox walking past our cabin:
Other than that I saw a juvenile Cooper's Hawk raging past our cabin this afternoon.

2 opmerkingen:

  1. Hi Fabian, I enjoy reading your blog. I started following after I volunteered at a banding station in Illinois and wondered about ringing in the Netherlands (where I lived for 9+ years). Anyway I am interested in learning more about the flight tunnel. If you'd care to share any more details on it I would be grateful. :) Thanks.

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  2. Hi Amy,

    Thanks for your comment! Nice to hear that you've lived in the Netherlands:) More information and details on the flight tunnel can be found on the Powdermill website: http://www.powdermillarc.org/research/flight-tunnel.aspx !

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