Banding/birding is a lot like surfing. You bob around in your element, scanning the horizon looking for signs that that big one is coming. You might do this for a long time: looking, looking, hoping, anticipating…only to have those hopes dashed as what you hoped would be a good ride peters out before you can catch it. And then you’re back to searching and waiting. But every now and then the signs are right and you can see this baby coming, picking up mass as it approaches and you just know that you’ve finally hit it and you’re in for the big ride.

Today we hit it. There were warblers everywhere. Most of them were Yellow-rumps and Western Palms but mixed in with them, for the lucky or keen-eyed, was the occasional extra treat: I got repor ts of Blackburnians, Black & Whites and Black-throated Greens and Gail MacLellan showed me a picture of a Nashville she took by one of the ponds. As well I saw Blue-headed and Warbling Vireos. It was quite a Neotropical day!

Ironically, we had a flurry of Pine Siskins at the feeders. What the heck!? These guys should be a long way north. Perhaps they spent the Winter in the Appalachians…..?

And then there was the remarkable recovery of “Joey”, the cowbird. Joey can be identified by the red darvic band on his left leg – an indication that he is one of the “Western University birds”. When he returned to Ruthven again this year and we caught him on April 24th he weighed a whopping (for a cowbird) 57.1 grams. But then things went very wrong…for him and a number of other ground-feeding birds. They got sick with what I think was Salmonella. This disease is transmitted through the feces of sick birds. We had our feeders concentrated in two locations and close together in those locations. Birds tend to feed under the feeders to pick up whatever falls and will pick up the disease readily if it’s present in the feces dropped from sick birds above. We retrapped Joey several times and his weight was plummeting. The last time we got him (April 27th) he weighed only 43.9 grams – a drop of 13 grams in just 4 days. At this time he was emaciated and so weak that he couldn’t fly – he hopped around the site. And then we didn’t see him anymore; I figured he was a goner. But today we trapped him again. He weighed 50.8 grams, well on his way to recovery. He was aggressive (toward my fingers) and flew away upon release strongly. I think he’s well on his way to recovery. [When we figured that we had an outbreak of disease, we dumped all the seed; disinfected all the feeders; moved the trap sites, set on patio stones, quite far apart from each other and well out from under the feeders. These measures seem to be working.]

Banded 53:
2 Mourning Doves
1 Tree Swallow
1 Blue-grey Gnatcatcher
1 Hermit Thrush
14 Yellow-rumped Warblers
2 Western Palm Warblers
1 Chipping Sparrow
1 Field Sparrow
2 Song Sparrows
1 Swamp Sparrow
6 White-throated Sparrows
4 Eastern White-crowned Sparrows
1 Dark-eyed Junco
1 Common Grackle
3 Pine Siskins
12 American Goldfinches

Species Count: 56 spp.

Photo Gallery:

Toad eggs are laid in water in long strings of up to 15,000 eggs. If stretched out, these strings may reach 20 to 66 feet (6-20 m) in length. The tiny individual eggs hatch in 3 to 12 days, depending upon the water temperature. At warmer temperatures, development within the egg occurs more rapidly.

Gail:
“These tiny invertebrates live only a few weeks when late winter rains flood grasslands and forest to fill the vernal pools for the shrimp to flourish in. As spring turns to summer, mature females lay eggs before the pools dry up completely. The eggs sit in the dry mud during the summer and freeze over during autumn and early winter. Then when the rains return, miraculously the weather-beaten eggs hatch to repeat the same process.
Because vernal pools dry up seasonally, fish generally can’t live in them. As a result amphibians, insects and fairy shrimp can thrive and maintain large populations.
High in protein, the little crustacean is an important food source for the journeying birds, as well as the local crowd of insects, crustaceans and amphibians.
Watch carefully in the pools along the Foxtail Den Trail or the water at the bottom of net 8.”

Rick