Bird Festival census walk….sign says it all.
There’s a lot of birds taking advantage of the light southerly winds and warm (hot!) temperatures to head north. When the day was done we had the highest species count – for both the census and the whole day – that I can recall in our 20 years of operation.
ASY male Magnolia Warbler.
Western Palm Warbler. -K. Duncan
Matt Timpf, gearing up for the Great Canadian Birdathon as leader of the Ruthven Ringers (our Birdathon team with Liz Vanderwoude, Ben Oldfield, and Giovanni Campanelli), lead the census and turned up 71 species, including 17 species of warblers. [Matt will be leading the census hike tomorrow at the Bird Festival, which starts at 8 AM sharp.] And in the course of the morning, through banding and searching the skies, we added another 15 species for a total of 86 species. Pretty respectable.
The census crew heading out on their epic count. (Matt, Janice, Sean left to right.)
The Festival starts this evening with a talk by Jody Allair from BSC. It should be a good weekend. Join us!
And if you’re interested in other things….say butterflies…we have lots of them too. Norm and Mary Pomfret have been coming weekly for many years just to count them. Yesterday they saw:
29 Cabbage Whites
2 Mourning Cloaks
3 Red Admirals
2 Eastern Commas
3 Spring Azures
Banded 56:
1 Mourning Dove
2 Blue Jays
1 Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
1 Veery
1 Swainson’s Thrush
7 Gray Catbirds
2 Blue-winged Warblers
7 Yellow Warblers
1 Magnolia Warbler
1 Western Palm Warbler
3 Common Yellowthroats
4 Rose-breasted Grosbeaks
1 Indigo Bunting
2 Chipping Sparrows
1 Field Sparrow
1 Lincoln’s Sparrow
3 White-throated Sparrows
4 Eastern White-crowned Sparrows
1 Red-winged Blackbird
5 Baltimore Orioles
7 American Goldfinches
Species Count: 86 spp.
Photo Gallery:
An Oil of Olay moment – Katie and Janet extracting Yellow Warblers.
Male Indigo Bunting. -K. Duncan
Black “eyebrows” indicate a male Blue-gray Gnatcatcher. -K. Duncan
Sean losing to a Red-bellied Woodpecker. -K. Duncan
First Veery of the year.
Magnolia Warbler.
Wing detail of a male Rose-breasted Grosbeak. The retained brown juvenile wing feathers indicate it is in its second year.
Janice discussing the wonders of Blue Jays with an appreciative audience.
Rick