A great day that wasn’t incredibly busy banding wise, but a nice mix of birds in the lab that were ideal for teaching a couple new volunteers. On census, a new species for the season was a Winter Wren! By mid-morning it was a beautiful sight to see ~25 Tree Swallows over the two meadows, checking out the nest boxes (which some of them still had a cap of snow)! There was one Eastern Phoebe calling and on one net round, there were three Tufted Titmouse to process.
Three Tufted Titmice processed at the same time
In the blog yesterday, I neglected to mention Carol brought her delicious, homemade cookies for the start of migration monitoring. Today, Matt served us these amazing Chocolate Cupcakes filled with salted caramel with vanilla buttercream frosting! A busy time in the kitchen last night for him (and his Mom).
Energy for the volunteers – Salted caramel filled chocolate cupcakes, with vanilla butter cream frosting – MTT
We handled 70 birds today, with 37 retraps. Some interesting retraps, including one American Robin originally banded in 2016 as an adult male.
Banded 33
3 American Robin
5 Song Sparrow
5 Slate-colored Junco
20 American Goldfinches
ET’s: 39
Rick’s Rill in a wintry state
Today’s census crew