Alessandra handles her boredom by drawing…..WOW!
Yesterday’s sunny weather was marred by a biting E wind but didn’t stop us from opening all the nets. And today we had patchy showers all morning and strong SE winds which caused us to open only a few nets (intermittently). But yesterday we banded only 11 birds while today we hit 23. And there was no sign that there was much of a migration going on. So we used up time yesterday with clearing black walnuts from some of the net lane areas (or, at least, Giovanni and Ben did the clearing although Alessandra and I gave them a lot of useful advice). And today Nancy and I finished off the huge volume of data entry from the Winter (most of which was done in just 2 days by Ralph Beaumont(!) – over 4,000 birds, most of them Snow Buntings) and sent in the data to the Banding Office. The birds we got today pushed us over the 500 banded bird mark for April – persistence pays off….sort of.
Ben and Giovanni hard at work clearing some of the net lanes of intruding black walnuts. When you see these two at work you just can’t help but think of Monty Python’s “Lumberjack Song”.
A lovely picture of a Common Loon – NOT taken at Ruthven. We have been watching for them but so far have seen only a few. -B, McCreadie
One of the neat things about the migration in April is the passage of Common Loons. If they’re on the move, we usually begin to see them about half an hour after sunrise. My thinking is that after spending the night on the Inner Bay on Lake Erie they take flight as soon as the sun hits the horizon and it takes them about half an hour to reach Ruthven. Almost invariably they are heading N or NNW. But the few loons we’ve seen so far have been split: a couple have been heading N; the others have been going S. Hard to explain.
The junco on the right is showing an interesting white eye ring.
On both days we continued to recapture local wintering tree sparrows and juncos. Most we have been catching almost daily for the past 3 weeks. At last we are seeing significant weight gains in these birds – it won’t be long before these birds will be on their way. Some of the juncos were showing fat loads of 4 or 5 (out of 6). And the weight gain has been quite fast – over a gram per day. Not bad in an 18-gram bird.
April 19th; Banded 11:
1 Tree Swallow
2 Ruby-crowned Kinglets
1 Hermit Thrush
1 Song Sparrow
3 Dark-eyed Juncos
1 Brown-headed Cowbird
2 American Goldfinches
Species Count: 43 spp. Mother Killdeer protects her eggs in all weather. -B. McCreadie A full clutch of 4 eggs now – the Killdeer have a long haul ahead of them. -B, McCreadie
April 20th; Banded 23:
3 Mourning Doves
2 Ruby-crowned Kinglets
1 European Starling
2 Chipping Sparrows
3 Dark-eyed Juncos
3 Brown-headed Cowbirds
9 American Goldfinches
Species Count: 38 spp.
Rick
What an amazing drawing. I think Alessandra will be famous some day.