Palo Clean

Today Michael and I headed to Muddy Hollow for a moderate day of banding!

Varied thrush (young male)


Varied thrush and song sparrow


Fox sparrow


Fox sparrow foot. They have massive claws for foraging in the dirt:

No pictures right now but a Carleton kid did THIIS

Anna's Hummingbirds

We got a good day of banding in at Pine Gulch today, catching 18 birds, 9 new, 9 recaptures.

Six of the birds we caught were Anna's hummingbirds. The first three we caught were within 3 inches of each other in a net, two males and a female, which had clearly been chasing each other.

Here is an after second year male, with a full crown and gorget:




The ASY male being weighed


Here is what I think we decided was an unknown aged female, with some feathers in it's gorget and two pink crown feathers:


Here is an after hatch year female, which had a limited number of pink gorget feathers, and no pink in it's crown:


When processing birds we do a lot of blowing of air on their bodies and through their feathers to take a look at molt, brood patches, cloacal protuberances, fat, etc. Some birds have feathers everywhere, but interestingly hummingbirds do not (this is not a brood patch):


Wrentit being weighed:


Wrentit:


A bushtit with lots of pollen around it's bill. The light iris color means it's a female:


Michael caught in an awkward moment:


The view from the banding spot at Pine Gulch, apparently it snowed at the top yesterday...

Raptors from before

Also, I'd been meaning to put up more of my dad's pictures from a previous job, but forget until just now, as I lay in bed, unable to sleep.

Now these guys were tough to get out...

Flordia birds

It's been raining here for a week, so nothing new to report really. I do have my NABC (North American Banding Council) banding certification test coming up next week, so there's been a lot of reviewing for that.

Here are some more from my dad from Florida:

Yellow crowned night heron


Little blue heron

Broken Iris

The Human Saw-Whet

25...

AWESOME picture from my dad:



And the lame view from Grid 4 again...

Snail Kite and Red Shoulder in flight

From my dad again, in Florida:

Snail Kite


Red Shouldered Hawk

Crested Caracara

My parents were down in Florida this past weekend watching the CUT play their first tournament of the year. They went 8-2, losing to FL and WI, but winning the whole thing!

Here's a great picture my dad got of a crested caracara flying off with a beak full of fish guts.

Recipes

I just scanned these in to send to Baylis, so I thought I'd put them up for others too. The noodles are the spicy noodles you have had at our house in Leverett if you've ever been around for a summer meal.

Michael (very successfully!) made (real) croissants

Set 4

This encapsulates everything that is NOT going on here

Dobbinator

Great weekend in Oakland. Had a chance to meet the Dobbins parents and have a couple of GREAT meals out with them (one was at Chez Panisse, Alice Waters' restaurant in Berkeley, mind blowingly good).


Franklin was there too.

35

We had 35 birds on Friday at Pine Gulch, a very nice change from the normal slow days recently. Off the top of my head we had: yellow rumped warblers (audubon's and myrtle), white crowned sparrows, golden crowned sparrows, fox sparrows, song sparrows, a lincoln's sparrow, a wrentit, two robins, hermit thrushes, an anna's hummingbird, and probably others...



song sparrow


All of the warblers had lots of pollen surrounding their bills, bunching up their feathers

Comtemplating a goose, dec 4

Ruby Crowned KInglet

Old pic

From Joe:

Huvi

Hutton's Vireo, common here, but we don't catch a ton.


They look a lot like ruby crowned kinglets, but a more hooked bill, fatter heads and huge eyes.

HUVI:


COMPARED TO

RCKI: