The trend continues!

We're having a great first week of October with some very good species. It started with the Clay-colored Sparrow on October 1st. Then the American Bittern on October 4th followed by the Wilson's Snipe on the 5th. And guess what we caught today: a Green Heron! The heron was already seen at first light:

The Pied-billed Grebe was very, very cooperative this morning!

The bird isn't shy as you can see above!

The story behind the Green Heron is pretty hilarious haha. Me and Mary were just finished with a round and ended up at the Crisp Pond where we flushed the Green Heron. It flew towards the 8c and seemed to be just landing in front of it. I walked towards 8c through the left and Mary through the right. Once we arrived at 8c I saw that the Green Heron was already on the 'wrong side' of the net! This meant that me and Mary couldn't flush it from 'our' side anymore. Therefore I figured someone else should come in from the other side. I radiod, saying that there was a Green Heron just sitting next to 8c. Brandon left the lab as soon as he heard me on the radio. Brandon came closer and yes! The bird took off and ended up in the net! As fast as I could I ran towards the net, but because I wanted to be there as soon as possible I didn't notice the string that was attached between the bush and the pole, so yes, in all my excitement I hit the string and more or less ended up in a thornbush. Luckily Brandon also ran as fast as he could and grabbed the heron. Eventhough we are just using a normal-sized mesh for 8c the Green Heron was pretty stuck and didn't escape.

Other than that the banding was pretty slow again like the previous two days. We had about 100 birds with 66 new ones. We had a first of the fall (which was also a lifer): a Brown Creeper! It looks quite similar to our European ones but when you look close you will see some differences.

Totals:

Green Heron 1 -

Blue-headed Vireo 2 -

Brown Creeper 1 -

Winter Wren 2 -

Golden-crowned Kinglet 2 -

Ruby-crowned Kinglet 6 -

Gray-cheeked Thrush 2 -

Swainson's Thrush 3 -

Gray Catbird 1 -

Cedar Waxwing 1 -

Cape May Warbler 1 -

Black-throated Blue Warbler 1 -

Yellow-rumped Warbler 11 -

Ovenbird 3 -

Eastern Towhee 1 -

Chipping Sparrow 1 -

Field Sparrow 1 -

Song Sparrow 4 -

Swamp Sparrow 5 -

White-throated Sparrow 6 -

Dark-eyed Junco 2 -

Rose-breasted Grosbeak 2 -

American Goldfinch 7 -

Total 66, 23 species

Just a selection from the many I took!

Brown Creeper

During the banding I flushed a Ruffed Grouse, a lifer. In the afternoon I went to the property of Chris, who volunteers once a week with banding. He lives a mile orso north of Powdermill and the last weeks he has seen quite a few Ruffed Grouse in his backyard. I did a short walk behind his house and soon flushed 3 Ruffed Grouse, of which I had good views!

I also drove up the Stoneylonesome Road again to get pictures of the beautiful woods and their fall colours. I will post these later!