Frozen nets...

Yesterday evening the weather forecast already showed that this morning (or night) the temperature would reach below 32 degrees Fahrenheit or 0 degrees Celsius, which means frost! This morning we opened the nets at 6.40 to try and beat the frost on the nets, but we were unlucky: the nets were frozen as hell! We could open a couple of nets that were situated in a 'dry' area but nevertheless this meant that the first two and a half hours we wouldn't catch a lot. At 9.20 we could finally open everything. The round after was pretty good with 60+ birds. It seemed that for today there were not a lot Yellow-rumps around, we only banded 8. That is reeeally low compared to our numbers of the last 5 days: 96,68,122,121,97... The total for Yellow-rumps for this month is at 895. When I look on the Powdermill website it seems that we're close to getting a record for Yellow-rumps: http://www.powdermillarc.org/highlights/2007/october.aspx. On this page it says that the record for October is 915 in 1982 and 818 in 1998, so we're already on the second place I believe with 895!

The month total is already at 2829 and we still have one more week to go!

Despite the freezing conditions we managed to get a decent catch today:

Blue-headed Vireo 1 -

Winter Wren 1 -

Golden-crowned Kinglet 4 -

Ruby-crowned Kinglet 12 -

Hermit Thrush 11 -

Cedar Waxwing 1 -

Yellow-rumped Warbler 8 -

Common Yellowthroat 1 -

Chipping Sparrow 1 -

Song Sparrow 9 -

Swamp Sparrow 6 -

White-throated Sparrow 13 -

White-crowned Sparrow 1 -

Dark-eyed Junco 6 -

House Finch 2 -

American Goldfinch 2 -

House Sparrow 1 -

Total 80 (109 incl recaps), 17 species

A common sight on the road: American schoolbuses stopping at home's to drop off the childeren after school.

Frozen droplets on the nets..

A pretty AHY male Dark-eyed Junco with a dark plumage.

Tammo left today. He had a great week here at Powdermill and enjoyed it very much! All the great birdspecies and beautiful scenery combined with the very kind people made it a succesful and worthwile trip for him. 

Concerning me, I only have one more week left here at Powdermill and then my 2 month adventure here will end, not something I want to think of yet, haha! So I guess in a week time I'll meet my dad (and my mom and sis again)!