Sleeping-in + catching birds = the perfect combination

Woke up this night at 1.15: Boooooom! A strike of thunder just hit something right outside our cabin.. that was a bit frightening! When I woke up I thought there was a war going on outside or something like that, haha. Woke up at 5.30 again, by my alarmclock, noticing that it was raining heavily oustide. Looking at the radar we figured that we might be able to open the nets a bit later. We slept in (took the advice from Drew!) and Drew gave us a call around 8.00 that we would open the nets soon. I took a quick shower and we arrived at the lab around 8.15. While opening we soon noticed that there were plenty of birds around. The first round we soon found the first big flock hanging in the nets! The next rounds were pretty good with good numbers and good bird species. The entire morning it was kind of drizzling/raining but the we kept getting some birds in the nets. We did rounds every 30 minutes to make sure no birds would be in jeopardy. This foggy day ended with 159 birds. 112 new ones spread over 34 species. As we can conclude from all the recaps lots of birds stayed overnight, due to the rain coming in around 1.15, when we heard the loud thunder. There must have been some good bird migration before the rain since we got good numbers and good species. See the list below:

Ruby-throated Hummingbird 5 -
Eastern Wood-Pewee 1 -
Yellow-bellied Flycatcher 2 -
Acadian Flycatcher 1 -
Least Flycatcher 1 -
Warbling Vireo 1 - Powdermill only gets 1 or 2 a year, a good bird!
Philadelphia Vireo 1 -
Red-eyed Vireo 12 -
Swainson's Thrush 3 -
American Robin 1 -
Gray Catbird 1 -
Brown Thrasher 1 -
Blue-winged Warbler 2 -
Tennessee Warbler 1 -
Nashville Warbler 2 -
Chestnut-sided Warbler 1 -
Magnolia Warbler 14 -
Cape May Warbler 3 -
Black-throated Blue Warbler 1 -
Black-throated Green Warbler 7 -
Blackburnian Warbler 1 -
Prairie Warbler 1 - ( I did get a good look on this bird, but I failed to photograph it because I was doing a round :( )
Blackpoll Warbler 2 -
American Redstart 15 - (A good number, just like yesterday!)
Northern Waterthrush 1 -
Common Yellowthroat 16 -
Hooded Warbler 1 -
Wilson's Warbler 1 -
Canada Warbler 1 -
Scarlet Tanagar 2 -
Rose-breasted Grosbeak 7 -
Indigo Bunting 1 -
Baltimore Oriole 1 -
American Goldfinch 1 -

The birdsssssss:

Blackpoll Warbler, after hatching-year male; this male is not as striking as a male in fall plumage might normally look. It had some retained black feathers on his head though. This was also a big individual with a wing length of 70.5, which is quite unusual!

Blue-winged Warbler, after hatching-year male; it is remarkable that the past week we've trapped 6 Blue-winged Warblers, and all of them were males! This male has golden wingbars, this can be an indication for the bird being a Brewster's Warbler; the hybrid Blue-winged X Golden-winged Warbler, but other than that the bird looked like a Blue-winged.

Nashville Warbler, after hatching-year male; just as small and cute as the Wilson's Warblers

These two Cape May Warblers were hanging next to each other in the net: hatching year female on the left and hatching year male on the right. A perfect couple!

White-eyed Vireo, hatching year; the same individual recaptured as 2 weeks ago

Warbling Vireo, hatching year

Warbling Vireo on the left, Philadelphia Vireo on the right. These two species can look quite similar as Warbling Vireo can have a yellowish look as well. There is however, on clear identification mark to seperate these two species:

With Warbling Vireo the 10th primary is longer than the primary coverts, with a Philadelphia Vireo this isn;t the case, as you can see above (the p10 is barely visible).

We were done with banding around 2.30. Afterwards me and Mary put up the last 2 nets of the 25 series, 25c and 25d. Then I headed to the Visitor's Centre where Drew gave a powerpoint presentation for the workshoppers on how to age passerines, which was quite useful.