NYE2K!)

Went to Muddy Hollow with Lisa today for banding. We had a big day, with 37 total birds, 8 species. One of the net runs left us with 17 birds in one net, 16 of which were Myrtle's yellow-rumped warblers. It was a bit overwhelming at first, but they are big, hearty warblers, so none of them got stressed. The unfortunately thing was that my supervisor was not there. While I feel like I now have a better idea of the differences I can see between 16 MYWA's, I am still unsure of what specific features help me distinguish a hatch year male from an after half year female. I did see two birds that seemed to clearly be after hatch year males, but the rest were recorded as unknown unknown... There are so many details for each species and until you are taught what's actually important, as opposed to what the guide tells us, it is hard to feel confident about many grey areas of ageing and sexing.

Here are the bags with birds in them, waiting to be banded after our flock of warblers hit.


The backside of what looked to certainly be an AHY male (looking at the size of the black centers of the feathers between the yellow rump and tail..


AMRO


Hermit thrush with some weird growth defect.