What a foxxy bird

We started off with a beautiful morning Clear skies resulting in a nice sunrise with patchy fog above the ponds. I saw a couple of woodcocks but none ended up in the nets. The first round was our best round with a lot of birds. Sparrows were the main species banded. We finally had our first Fox Sparrow. They are soo awesome! They're one of the biggest sparrows in N. America.

Aren't they fancy?

The one we band here are from the Eastern (Taiga) race, and these are definitively the coolest looking ones.

There were again quite a few Junco's around, we banded 14. In the afternoon there was a flock of 30 junco's foraging in the grass in front of our cabin. We passed the 100 new, which was good considering the sunny conditions. Among the kinglets we also had this crazy one:

It had an old wound on the back of its head resulting in a funky hairstyle..

Our tenth Northern Flicker of this fall. A hatching year female.

The totals:

Northern Flicker 1 -

Tufted Titmouse 1 -

Winter Wren 2 -

Golden-crowned Kinglet 4 -

Ruby-crowned Kinglet 12 -

Hermit Thrush 3 -

Cedar Waxwing 5 -

Yellow-rumped Warbler 19 - just 2 short of breaking the October record!

Eastern Towhee 2 -

Chipping Sparrow 1 -

Field Sparrow 1 -

Fox Sparrow 1 -

Song Sparrow 13 -

Swamp Sparrow 7 -

White-throated Sparrow 13 -

White-crowned Sparrow 1 -

Dark-eyed Junco 14 -

Northern Cardinal 1 -

American Goldfinch 6 -

Total 107, 19 species

A group of 20 Cedar Waxwings was eating crabapples next to the banding lab. They weren't shy and with the good light I was able to take some good photos.

This night we caught two owls of two different species!

Northern Saw-whet Owl

Eastern Screech Owl; so cool!!

Eastern Screech Owl

 Drew and Bob

 Brandon and Fabian

Mary and Heather