A recapture Saw-whet last night!

With last nights banding with caught 3 Saw-whet Owls. 2 of them were new and 1 of them was a recapture!! The recapture rates on these owls are high because a lot of people band them in fall in the nortern states of the U.S and in Canada. It was pretty cool that we already had a Saw-whet recapture this fast, as we have only banded 6 Saw-whets so far! The three birds were a hatching-year, a second-year and an after-second-year.

Saw-whet Owl, hatching year; no moult pattern present

Saw-Whet Owl, second year; the typical moult pattern of a SY. The outer primaries and inner secondaries are new.

The recaptured bird. Eventhough it is really subtle it seems that you can distinguish three generations of feathers which makes this a ASY. The colours red and blue show the new feathers (generations).

Two Saw-whets posing next to eachother/

The weird looking ear of an owl!

The banding today was pretty slow, with 78 birds being caught. The internet was out this afternoon at the banding lab so I don't have the numbers yet. We didn't capture anything exciting although this orange-crowned Ruby-crowned Kinglet was interesting:

Totals:

Winter Wren 1 -

White-breasted Nuthatch 1 -

Gray Catbird 1 -

Cedar Waxwing 8 -

Chipping Sparrow 1 -

Fox Sparrow 1 -

Song Sparrow 1 -

White-throated Sparrow 5 -

Dark-eyed Junco 12 -

Northern Cardinal 1 -

American Goldfinch 23 -

Total 55, 11 species

Tomorrow I'll be banding for a few hours in the morning before I take off to the airport, for a second try! I have now booked one flight earlier to Philadelhpia to make sure I won't miss my connection in Philly. So tomorrow will be my last day for real!!