Other RECR birds

The same day we caught the Ovenbird we had this Pygmy Nuthatch, a resident species that PRBO had only caught ten of previously.


For some reason we were also catching far more adult male Allen's Hummingbirds than usual, with six for the day I believe.

The fourth

Tomorrow's the fourth. We made a float and it rules.

Western bluebird with a food carry


Allen's hummingbird

Tiny birds

Hummingbird and band


Bushtit

Shocked

An Allen's hummingbird from yesterday that was a bit shocked by the banding processes, but flew off fine after a few shots of sugar water.

Allen's

Hummingbird tail

Allen's Hummingbird tail

Best day so far

Today Amanda and I had a really great day banding at Redwood Creek. We caught a total of 41 birds, with 16 species. The highlights were 2 barn swallows, a tree swallow, a black-headed grosbeak, a warbling vireo, and mix of juvenile birds! We also ran into a female common merganser with 4 chicks, shortly before peeking into the hummingbird nest I found the week before, which now has two cute little raisin-like nestlings in it.

Female black-headed grosbeak


Steller's Jay


Barn swallow #1



Barn swallow #1, female


Barn swallow #2, male



Barn swallow #2, awesome tail, and with a couple of retained primaries in there


Barn swallow secondaries, very cool heart shape, which you don't see in other birds


Male California quail






All three of us, wearing hats


Tree swallow




Hummingbird raisins

Bluuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Redwood Creek

Today was our first day banding at one of our summer/fall offsites. It was a beautiful day, we had an easy set up (@6:25) and caught 30 birds in total.

We caught our first Swainson's thrushes today (5 of them), and got some good practices learning their calls for the first time.


Also our first adult male Allen's






"banding lab"




Rainpants next time

Bigish day

Crazy day at Pine Gulch for us. After a fairly unsuccessful day yesterday we re-setup today, expecting worse weather than yesterday. It was looking that way, but after opening and closing the nets a couple of times, we were able to keep them running for close to enough hours. However, the wind picked up, and despite the clear sky we had to shut down early. That, however, does not mean that we didn't get any birds. On one net run we had 17 birds, which made things hectic as it started to rain, bird bags were low, and new interns are still working on skills like extraction (let alone doing it under semi-pressure). It all went well though, and ended up having a nice flow of birds for the next couple of hours, leaving us with a final of 25 birds and 7 species, which included: swamp sparrow, both subspecies of yellow rumped warblers, pine siskin, Anna's hummingbird, bushtit, common yellowthroat, and lincoln's sparrow.

Here is the swamp sparrow, a species we only catch a few times a year:


Female common yellowthroat


Male common yellowthroat


Cara and Renee processing the hummingbird




Female bushtit


Faded wingtips

Allen's

We caught our first Allen's hummingbird of the spring today. I didn't get any pictures, but here is one from my dad: