Seeds

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


Baby wrentit


Baby brown creeper from today

The fourth

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

Western bluebird with a food carry


Allen's hummingbird

Wrentits

Unbanded!

Worn wrentit wing

A second year wrentit with the most wear I've ever seen

SY Wrentit

A second year wrentit (see molt limit in secondaries):

Wrentit molt

So, usually wrentits will replace all of their feathers during their first molt in the late summer of their hatch year, but the one we caught today seemed to have retained a few, something we rarely see.

Right wing, with one retained secondary (light brown compared to gray)


Left wing, with three retained secondaries

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...

Long day

Yesterday Joe, Diana and I went to Pine Gulch, the offsite by the lagoon, and had a successful day of banding. We got 21 birds and 11 species, one of which was a swamp sparrow, something that's only caught around here about once a year. This was the last of the banding until Sunday, but luckily I'm here, so it can happen! Kidding, I'd rather be home.

Wrentit




A hermit thrush in the net before extraction.


Bewick's wren.