On Monday, July 16 we began our 11th season of autumn songbird migration research & monitoring and captured 111 birds on day 1 (I'm really glad that our faithful volunteers Carol, Dave, & Gary were there!). It's been somewhat less busy since but we've likely averaged 65-75 birds per day in the first week. The crew consists of Carlos (Venezuela), Claudia (Colombia), Elizabeth (California), Leela (Massachusetts), Gary (Mountain Home, ID), and myself and they're all doing well and picking things up quickly!
We've caught big #s of warblers (especially Nashville, Yellow, and MacGillivray's) and Dusky Flycatchers and pretty impressive #s of others including Cassin's Vireos (8 in 1 day - mostly juveniles) and Brewer's Sparrows (we caught 3 adult females - with brood patches - in one net today). The big highlight, though, was an immature Northern Pygmy-owl that we captured and banded this morning ... this makes 11 straight years in which we've banded at least 1 (most years we catch 1 but we have caught as many as 5 in a season). Maybe I can get a picture from someone else's camera soon....
Cheers,
Jay
PS I've been so busy training that I haven't taken many pictures. However, below is a 1-yr old (second calendar year) male Cooper's Hawk that we caught a couple weeks ago during MAPS banding .... pretty neat to see the 2 generations of feathers.
Also, here's a shot of us setting up camp yesterday ....
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