Barton Cove

Snow Goose and Merlin, highlights at Barton Cove, Turner's Falls.

Songbirds (97) and Raptors (50+)

Great day up at the ridge today. I started off helping with passerine banding shortly after sunrise. We thought it might be a good day, and I knew it would be once I arrived at the ridge and found huge flocks of warblers moving through. We ended up with 97 birds of 21 species. Highlights were Western Palm Warbler, Gray-cheeked Thrush (life bird), Magnolia Warblers, Blue-headed Vireos, Mourning Warblers and full on adult male American Redstarts.

Blue-headed Vireo


Orange-crowned Warbler, not super exciting for me, but fairly uncommon here!


Mourning Warbler


After the songbirds slowed down I spent the rest of the day banding with Frank, ending with around 55 raptors for the day, mostly sharpies, a couple of Cooper's, a Northern Harrier and a Merlin.

Female Merlin


Young male Northern Harrier


Adult female Cooper's

Comparison

I don't have much new to show, but I thought I'd put up a comparison post. A lot of these pictures are repeats but I separated them by genus and labeled them by age and sex if I knew it. We still haven't caught some varieties (like an adult male harrier) and I'm missing pictures of a few (like a female kestrel), but I thought this would give a good look at the hawks we have been catching, with side-by-side comparisons to show some differences.

Falcons:
Immature Merlin


Immature male kestrel




Immature peregrine





Accipiters:
Sharp-shinned
Two immature birds, female on the left, male on the right:


Two adults with different shades of the eyes:




Cooper's
Immature:


Adult:


Northern goshawk
Immature



Buteos
Broad-winged
Immature:


Red-tailed
Immature:
These are three different birds






Circus:
Northern harrier
Immature


Adult female

Forgot my camera to load new pictures, but we caught two long eared owls last night, so those to come.

Perched merlin

Photo by my pa

Wind

The wind has been great the last two days so we have been seeing a lot of birds and catching a few. The wind also makes it easier for the birds to bounce out of the nets, so we've had a bunch of close calls. Today we caught our first two merlins of the year and I got mine using the bownets which was a first for me. Threw the dove for attention, threw the starling to bring it in, it pounced on the sparrow and I dragged it in at sprang the net.






Each night we've also been attempting to catch nighthawks, for fun. Well, we finally got one last night. They are the strangest birds I've ever seen, hissing at you with their fleshy mouths like the demonic goatsuckers they are.





Fud

First couple days

Alright, so, in Duluth. We've had a couple of days of set up and are ready to trap some hawks. The only problem is that the hawks don't really start flying for a couple of weeks...and it's raining. So the next couple of weeks we will be having some long boring days of looking into the empty sky, perhaps catching a few birds, but mostly just waiting for september to some. I'll try to put up pictures as they come, but internet is scarce and there won't be much action for awhile.

Here are a couple of pictures of where we're working/living.

This is the back end of the banding blind, with our food stacked up on the shelves


Inside the blind:


I sleep on the left bottom!


My bossman. Chain smokin,' coke and beer drinkin,' no eatin,' hawk wranglin' dude, with an injured merlin brought by: