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!!

I guess I'm not back yet

I thought that yesterday would be my last day here in the US. But I was proved wrong! Yesterday, me, Brandon, Mary, Amy and Heather went to Pittsburgh, to the Science Center, one of the four Carnegie Museums/ After our visit here we would eat at Chipotle and then they would drop me off at the airport.

The A-team van of Mary. Now listen to this: The A-team theme song!

The Science Center was good fun. We explored some cool stuff and went in a Submarine for example! After that we ate at Chipotle and then went to the airport.

YumYum at Chipotle!

I was already checked-in online and only had to check-in my suitcase. I said everybody goodbye and went through security. Then, later, as I was waiting to board Flight 1893 to Philadelphia of 5.45 pm. me, and all the other passengers suddenly heard around 5.30 that the flight had been delayed. And then, a few minutes later we heard it was canceled!! Whaaaaat???????? The agents of US Airways said that the airplane had 'mechanical problems' and was not able to fly Philadelphia. Well, thanks US Airways, this will be the last time I'll fly with you! I had to call someone from US Airways to see when my next flight back would go. I rescheduled my flight for coming Thursday, at 3.05 pm. On the one hand I was a bit mad because I was convinced that I would be home today. On the other hand I didn't really mind as I had a couple of extra days here! I called Mary and told her the bad news. Mary etc. were still stuck in traffic so they could come and pick me up again. So there I was, back at Powdermill. We didn't tell Drew yet yesterday, you should've seen the look on his face this morning when I reappeared!

Anyway, I still would like to share some pics from Owl banding Sunday night. Next to a young bird, we also caught an adult (a second-year).

Northern Saw-Whet Owl, second-year. On the wing you can see two generations of feathers, making this bird a second year. The bird showed an odd moult pattern however, normally the most outer primaries and inner secondaries are replaced, instead of what you see on the above photo.

Note the hind of yellow on the old primaries/secondaries and the hint of pink on the new primaries/secondaries. Pretty weird!

 Posing in my hand

Posing on my head!

Posing after release

So today we were banding again. It was a sunny morning with a bit of frost on the nets in the morning. The nets were visible so the numbers dropped after the sun came through.

Northern Flicker 1 -

White-breasteds Nuthatch 1 -

Winter Wren 3 -

Golden-crowned Kinglet 2 -

Ruby-crowned Kinglet 2 -

Hermit Thrush 2 -

Cedar Waxwing 12 -

Yellow-rumped Warbler 4 -

Song Sparrow 6 -

Swamp Sparrow 5 -

White-throated Sparrow 10 -

Dark-eyed Junco 5 -

Northern Cardinal 1 -

Purple Finch 2 -

American Goldfinch 19 -

House Sparrow 1 -

Totals 76, 16 species

There were a lot of Waxwings around. They weren't shy as you can see above. This one dropped his berry, which was actually too big for him!

Purple Finch, after-hatching year male

Hatching-year Titmouse on the left. After hatching-year Titmouse on the right. Note the difference in primary coverts (just as with our Blue/Great Tits.

Ahwww, this Ruby-crowned Kinglet just got weighed in the cone!

Powdermill, I'm going to miss you!

And there it was already.. my last day at Powdermill! These two months went by so fast, too fast..! I've enjoyed being here so much with all the kind people around me, but of course also all the wonderful North-American birds. I'm going to miss all of the Powdermill banding crew!

So today was my last banding day. Despite the frozen nets (again) we caught a lot of birds, about 165, of which 124 were new, spread over 17 species. I didn't get any new ones for me in the hand anymore, although we almost caught a group of 10 Bluebirds. But no, these birds were too smart for us and sat on the netpoles and lines! It was a goldfinch day with 66 Goldfinches banded.

Tufted Titmouse 1 -
Golden-crowned Kinglet 1 -
Ruby-crowned Kinglet 4 -
Yellow-rumped Warbler 7 -
Eastern Towhee 1 -
Chipping Sparrow 1 -
Field Sparrow 4 -
Fox Sparrow 1 -
Song Sparrow 5 -
Lincoln's Sparrow 1 -
Swamp Sparrow 2 -
White-throated Sparrow 8 -
Dark-eyed Junco 19 -
Northern Cardinal 1 -
House Finch 1 -
American Goldfinch 66 -
House Sparrow 1 -

Total 124 (165 incl recaps), 17 species.

Lincoln's Sparrow, hatching year; a late individual

This photo just to give you an indication on the biting skills of Northern Cardinals!

And as it is my last night here, we are trying for owls! The results so far:

Mad Screech Owl because he got recaptured!

Heather with the cooperative Screech perched on her arm

Saw-whets like getting scratched as you can see!

The Saw-whet was even willing to sit on the head of this Filipino guy/

My first American snowballfight!

That's right. Last night it started snowing.. and it hasn't stopped since! We could open our nets this morning but for some reason the snow got stuck in all the nets and the nets were as droopy as they could get. We decided to close most of our nets and keep the 'feeder' nets open. So the rest of the morning we had about 7 nets open.

After we saw that the nets held on to the snow this badly, we closed most of them immediately.

Last night, while failing to catch any owls, we decided to order a Big Town Pizza again! They're so enormous!

Nice!

With the 7 nets open we caught some birds. About 33 in total of which 22 were new. Spread over 7 species.

Sorry, but I can't resist to post another picture of these fabulous Fox Sparrows:

Fox Sparrow in the snow!

Brandon didn't bring gloves, so he used bird bags. Such a smart guy!

After the short banding session we had a real snowballfight!We had so much fun, as you can probably see in the photos below!

Thanks to Mary, for taking all these photos,

 After hitting Brandon 3 times in the face, he figured he would go after me..

 This was the second hit in the face!

He could barely walk.

 Yup, Brandon was about to go down.

 Here he is, K.O.

 Drew a.k.a the Baseballer trying to hit me.

 In action

 Heather watch out!!

 Drew poaching snowballs from Brandon's fortress.

 Heather vs. Faba

 Heather vs. Brandy

Heather vs. Drew vs. Brandon

The Waxiest Wings of All

We banded 59 of these cute Cedar Waxwings today. Most of them were caught at once, in the 11 nets. Brandon came across them and took a photo:

Waxwings, Waxwings and more Waxwings (by Brandon)

This morning we didn't think we would band 165 new birds today.. The nets were frozen until 10.30...! We were able to open three nets at the beginning, around 7.15 pm. The first new bird we banded this morning was a very unusual Sparrow!! Around 8.30 I pulled this very weird sparrow out of the 8c net. I knew it was a life bird for me, but I wasn't sure about the species. When I brought it in I showed it to Drew and Amy. They already knew what it was, but I  didn't. I had a quick look in the Sibley: Vesper Sparrow! A species that used to be captured quite regularly in the early years when the site looked much more like farmland. Nowadays, Vesper Sparrow can be considered as a rarity here at Powdermill!

 Bob holding the Vesper Sparrow

 Vesper Sparrow, after hatching year

The red shoulder patch is really distinctive for this species.

An adult female Dark-eyed Junco with white mascara!

 One of the four Fox Sparrows captured today. This one is an adult bird.

This adult Fox Sparrow had some white feathers spread over its body. Some on the rump, one white greater covert and some white on the back.

Totals for today:

Black-capped Chickadee 1 -

Tufted Titmouse 4 -

White-breasted Nuthatch 2 -

Golden-crowned Kinglet 1 -

Ruby-crowned Kinglet 8 -

Hermit Thrush 1 -

Cedar Waxwing 59 -

Yellow-rumped Warbler 4 -

Chipping Sparrow 2 -

Field Sparrow 3 -

Vesper Sparrow 1 -

Fox Sparrow 4 -

Song Sparrow 8 -

Swamp Sparrow 7 -

White-throated Sparrow 14 -

Dark-eyed Junco 16 -

Indigo Bunting 1 -

House Finch 1 -

American Goldfinch 28 -

Total 165 (199 incl recaps), 19 species

A short banding session in between the rainshowers

Rain again this morning.. We slept in a bit and it was not until 9.40 that we could open. The radar looked positive; not any showers coming. After we opened it became clear that the radar had lied! Rain was on its way again. We had the nets open for two hours orso but it already started raining earlier. In the dry period we trapped a good amount of birds: 84 birds. 65 new spread over 14 species. There were some good species among those such as Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, Orange-crowned Warbler and a male Downy Woodpecker.

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker 1 -

Black-capped Chickadee 1 -

Winter Wren 1 -

Ruby-crowned Kinglet 12 -

Hermit Thrush 1 -

Cedar Waxwing 11 -

Orange-crowned Warbler 1 -

Yellow-rumped Warbler 6 -

Field Sparrow 4 -

Song Sparrow 1 -

Swamp Sparrow 4 -

White-throated Sparrow 17 -

White-crowned Sparrow 1 -

American Goldfinch 4 -

Total 65, 14 species

Downy Woodpecker, hatching year male

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, hatching year male

Orange-crowned Warbler, prying its bill!

For now, it's owl time!! or not... 0 owls tonight

Mud is Slippy.

My alarmclock went off at 6.15 this morning. I woke up but fell asleep immediatly again.. to wake up again at 7.10.. Brandon was also still asleep and we were late.. We were supposed to be at the banding station at 7.00 haha. When we arrived 5 min later at the banding station we saw that the nets were closed: it was going to rain. So in fact we could have stayed in bed a little bit longer! While we were waiting for the rain to pass by (Brandon went back to bed) I selected a few photos for on the Powdermill website. Around 9.00 most of the rain had passed by and we could open, yay! There were a lot of birds around so we were excited to get the nets open. I made a couple of shots of the sunrise a few minutes before it started to rain around 7.40:

A 2 minute interval between both pictures, resulting in different colours! 

During one of the netrounds I walked back along the Crisp Pond and slipped and made a faceplant in the mud.. must have been pretty amusing for Heather who was walking just behind my back haha. I was carrying some birds with me but of course birds are my number one priority so I held them in the air in front of me, resulting in a pretty bad faceplant for me haha but the birds were ok! It is currently extemely wet and muddy, it's crazy! 

The result..

Despite the fact that we opened late we had a really good day. Few recaptures, lots of new ones! The kinglets moved in with 55 Ruby-crowneds and 21 Golden-crowned Kinglets banded today. We had two late warbler species today: 2 Magnolia Warblers and 1 Chestnut-sided Warbler!! We hadn't banded a Chestnut-sided for at least a month so that was a good surprise. Furthermore we broke the Yellow-rumped record for October!! 

Eastern Phoebe 2 -

Blue-headed Vireo 1 -

Black-capped Chickadee 1 -

Tufted Titmouse 1 -

House Wren 1 -

Winter Wren 3 -

Hermit Thrush 8 -

Cedar Waxwing 3 -

Nashville Warbler 1 -

Magnolia Warbler 2 -

Chestnut-sided Warbler 1 -

Yellow-rumped Warbler 18 - 

Fox Sparrow 2 -

Song Sparrow 13 -

Swamp Sparrow 6 -

White-throated Sparrow 13 -

Dark-eyed Junco 2 -

Indigo Bunting 1 -

House Finch 1 -

American Goldfinch 20 -

Total 176 (209 incl recaps) , 22 species

Cutie!

This adult male Chestnut-sided Warbler will get the ''Best looking Chestnut-sided of the fall'' Award!