Healed

Mornings like this are always encouraging when it comes to the subject of bird injuries. Occasionally birds can get injured during the banding process, sometimes resulting in something like a broken leg. While this is very rare, it is something we think about a lot, doing everything we can to prevent. In the case of a broken leg we treat the injury to the best of our abilities and release the bird back into the wild. It may seem far fetched to assume a one legged bird can survive in the wild, but it does happen and we have recaptured birds with fully healed legs that had once been broken while banding or in the wild.

Today, our first bird was a hermit thrush (second of the summer!). Though it had never been banded before, you can tell in the picture below that this bird's right leg had once been broken, but was is now completely healed, and strong as ever (well, almost). I did however band it on it's left leg, as the crook in it's right may have caused some complications with the band moving freely.


Just now we caught his purple finch! This is a fully healed injury where the bird is missing all of it's leg below it's tarsal joint (essentially below the knee). Not only was this bird doing fine, but it had a brood patch, indicating that it was a breeding female.

Band tailed pigeon

Mac

Two days ago we had 50 birds at RECR, and today we had 73 at MUHO! Pretty much all hatch year birds. The youth is certainly dispersing. Today it as mostly (25ish) wilson's warblers, but we did have one stud, this macillivray's warbler. They are around some, but I haven't seen one since I've been here, so it was exciting to see.

End of the year party

We had the end of the season party on Sunday, heading to a beach for a bit in the afternoon, then to Renee and Tom's place for pork shoulder and mustaches.



Intern 'stache photo

HETH v SWTH

We just caught our first hermit thrush of the season! While they are quite common during the winter, they don't breed here at palo. We do hear them over the hill occasionally, but never catch adults until the breeding season is over. This juvenile was a surprise at the net, as it was noticeably smaller than our usual thrush and after taking a look at the wing, we realized why. Compared to the swainson's thrush, which weighed ~29 grams, this guy was ~20 grams.

On the bird on the left, the fourth flight feather from the end of the wing is longer than the outer most feather, as well as emarginated, making it a hermit thrush. On the bird on the right, the fourth feather from the end of the wing is shorter than the outer most feather, and is not emarginated, making it a swainson's thrush.

THE Tiniest

Juvenile golden crowned kinglet

Second bat in my hat

The was the second bat in a couple of days that ended up being caught with my hat. This time it somehow ended up inside well after sunrise.

A banded BEWR

Vultures are pretty too

Target netting

We went out to Pine Gulch yesterday in an attempt to target net one of the GLS tagged birds, alas, no luck. Saw him though.

Seeds

Here you can see the seed in this purple finch's crop through its skin


Baby wrentit


Baby brown creeper from today

Veg transect one done

SW fest

Bushtit


Black Phoebe with a dragonfly in mouth


Female western bluebird with huge cricket of some sort

House wren

At pine gulch on Friday, accompanied by Amanda's grandma and mom, we caught a house wren! It's not the oddest of birds, but for the area it's fairly uncommon. It was the 30th for the Palomarin field station, and the fourth at pine gulch (since the 70s). It was a bit confusing at first, as all we usually catch are Bewick's wrens and Pacific wrens, which look quite different than house wrens, and we were not expecting it, but we figured it out.

Bath

Western scrubjay bathing at Keith Hansen's gallery. We were looking for the dickcissel that has been seen there the last few days, but did not see it, sadly.

Sorry...

...more bluebirds, feeding, finding fat worms.

In the net

Female goldfinch


This birds leg appears to have been previously broken, and despite somewhat of an angle, it has healed, and is sturdy as ever.

Logo

Caspian tern


Common raven

More bluebirds

Still feeding young, which inhabit this hybrid cliff swallow nest tissue box

Second best

Second best "float"

Tug-o-war

Here's a video of the womens

Bewick's Wren

It turns out that I banded this bird 10 days ago, because though you can't see it here, it is color banded and I was able to look it up. It is one of the parents of the nest in one of the chickadee boxes.