Rain and thunder!

I woke up quite early this morning, around 4.15. I guess I still need to get used to the time here. I don't mind it however because now I don't need to set my alarmclock, because I am already awake! I got at the banding station around 6.10 and we started opening the nets again. The first round was really quiet with only 10 birds orso. It did bring is two good species of warblers: Connecticut and Mourning Warbler! I will place some pictures later for comparison of these two species that look quite similar. The second round was good with many more birds, about 30. Then at 7.45 we heard some thunder and on the radar we saw that we would get some bad rain and thunder! So we quickly closed the nets. We had some new birds as we were closing down. The clouds looked creepy as they were moving in quickly! We closed the nets right on time because some minutes later it started raining like hell, together with thunder and lightning! Luckily we had all the birds inside and the nets closed. We still had a decent amount of birds though as we only did 2 (and a half) rounds. We ended up with 52 birds, 44 new ones. 

Ruby-throated Hummingbird 6 -

Trail's Flycatcher (Alder/Willow) 2 -

Least Flycatcher 3 -

Red-eyed Vireo 10 -

Black-capped Chickadee 2 -

Wood Thrush 1 -

Gray Catbird 2 -

Chestnut-sided Warbler 3 -

Magnolia Warbler 2 -

Connecticut Warbler 1 -

Mourning Warbler 1 -

Common Yellowthroat 7 -

Hooded Warbler 2 -

Canada Warbler 1 -

Rose-breasted Grosbeak 1 -

Total 44, 15 species

Bad weather coming in:

Rain!

Mary and Heather banding some birds:

The Birds:

Connecticut on the left, Mourning on the right. Both females. In the field these two species often get confused, in the hand however they look quite different.

Least Flycatcher on the left and Alder Flycatcher on the right. Least and Trail's (Alder/Willow) Flycatcher are quite easily seperated. The Least has got a full eye ring and is remarkably smaller. Further more the Least flycatcher has the 6th primary emarginated, the Trail's haven't. Sometimes Alder and Willow Flycatcher can be seperated (as with this one) but most of the time they can't, and these birds are called Trail's Flycatchers.

Canada Warbler, female

American Goldfinch, after-second year male

Tufted Titmouse, this one reminded me a little of europe: these birds make sounds like Blue tits (screaming in the net) and are as keen on your hands as our Blue Tits!

So while it was raining outside me and Heather went to Amy, who runs the biacoustic lab. We helped with detecting flight calls that were recorded at night by microphones. We used a special program for this. I will explain more about that some other time since it's really interesting!

Around twelve I met my new roommate for the coming period. His name is Brandon and he is a really nice guy! He will help at Powdermill as well for at least the entire month September, and probably October also.

This afternoon we had some light thunder and rain as well. Currently the sun is shining a little. Hopefully we won't have to close the nets as early as today!