Rain and Birds

No banding today, that was what I thought when I woke up this morning. The radar looked crap so no reason for getting up. I stayed in my bed but couldn't really go back to sleep. I decided to go out of bed arournd 8.00. I had some breakfast and took a shower. Around 8.45 Drew gave us a call saying that we might be able to open some nets for a bit as it seemed that it would be dry for a while. We hadn't expected it so we were pleased that we could do some banding. As we arrived I already saw two Belted Kingfishers around in the area and 2 Ospreys were hunting in the surroundings. We immediately noticed that there were quite a few birds around. We open 2/3 of our nets and waited to see what was there to come. The first round was pretty good with lots of birds in the Pond nets. The first round we already had 4 Palm Warblers, the day ended with 16 Palm Warblers, a very good total for this species! We weren't sure for how long we would have the nets open but the weather seemed ok, eventhough we had a slight drizzle with some real rain here and there. The day started for us at 9.00 (opening) and didn't end until 15.00! Every round was good with most rounds about 40 birds. The day ended with 190 birds, of which 161 were new. Quite amazing considering the crappy weather conditions: cold, rainy and windy. We had an amazing day for Indigo Buntings with 22 banded. Gray-cheeked Thrushes overruled the Swainson's todady with 11 being banded.

Right now, at the time of writing, it is raining again so we were lucky to have a dry period in which would could band a lot of birds!

Totals:

Black-billed Cuckoo 1 - (beautiful adult bird!)
Blue-headed Vireo 1 -
Red-eyed Vireo 1 -
Winter Wren 1 -
Ruby-crowned Kinglet 2 -
Gray-cheeked Thrush 11 -
Swainson's Thrush 8 -
Gray Catbird 18 -
Tennessee Warbler 2 -
Nashville Warbler 6 -
Magnolia Warbler 10 -
Black-throated Blue Warbler 2 -
Yellow-rumped Warbler 8 -
Black-throated Green Warbler 1 -
Palm Warbler (Western) 16 -
Blackpoll Warbler 4 -
Black-and-White Warbler 1 -
American Redstart 2 -
Ovenbird 2 -
Northern Waterthrush 2 -
Connecticut Warbler 3 - (good October species!!)
Common Yellowthroat 6 -
Scarlet Tanager 1 -
Eastern Towhee 1 -
Song Sparrow 2 -
Lincoln's Sparrow 4 -
Swamp Sparrow 13 -
White-throated Sparrow 3 -
White-crowned Sparrow 2 -
Rose-breasted Grosbeak 3 -
Indigo Bunting 22 -
American Goldfinch 2 -

Total 161, 32 species

Brandy and Faba with lots of birds (41 that round if I'm not mistaken)!

Ovenbird choosing to feed on sunflower seeds instead of insects with this cold weather!

One of the 16 Palm Warblers today, an after hatching-year bird

8 Yellow-rumped Warblers now already is a good sign, let's hope for many more!!

2 of the 3 Connecticut Warblers today were extremely fat as you can see in the above picture.

Two White-crowned Sparrows hanging in the nets were a nice surprise. The above bird is an after hatching-year.

I will end today's photos with these of a striking adult Black-billed Cuckoo (he looks angry)!