It felt a bit like old home week what with the return of Christine Madliger and Chris Harris from Windsor for a weekend of banding, the arrival of Faye Socholotiuk for her usual Saturday stint (a form of rehab after her week of teaching), the awakening of Nancy Furber (she crashed in the lab after a night of trying to lure Saw-whet Owls), and the assistance of Mike Furber – a “raptor guy” whose presence was most timely. So we had a pretty good team assembled. And the birds just flowed through the lab…..

And then there was the excited cry from Net 2: “There’s a Sharp-shinned Hawk!!” I ran to make a recovery (these things can bounce out of the net quite easily) and found, not a ‘Sharpie’, but a young male Cooper’s Hawk – only the 2nd one netted at Ruthven. This bird must have come zooming in on a prey bird and angled into the net. We figure that if it had gone straight into the net (a light passerine net) it would have gone right through it. Not only did it provide a lot of excitement but it also provided Christine with a banding first and Mike with an opportunity to teach the team about aging and sexing Accipters.

We got a good number of birds again today (105 handled) but the pattern of capture was much different than the past couple of days. We had been catching a lot of birds in the nets closest to the river but today they were further inland in their usual pattern – following the scrubby edge bordering the parking lot and field (nets 1A-2-4-5-6-7). It’s difficult to explain the reasons for this. Sparrows made up the largest proportion of the birds banded –almost half (38 out of 78).

Banded 78:1 Cooper’s Hawk
1 Downy Woodpecker
1 Eastern Tufted Titmouse
1 Brown Creeper
7 Golden-crowned Kinglets
3 Ruby-crowned Kinglets
6 Hermit Thrushes
1 Gray Catbird
1 Red-eyed Vireo
1 Tennessee Warbler
2 Nashville Warblers
7 Myrtle Warblers
1 Blackpoll Warbler
4 Common Yellowthroats
1 Northern Cardinal
3 Chipping Sparrows
2 Field Sparrows
5 Swamp Sparrows
17 White-throated Sparrows
4 Eastern White-crowned Sparrows
4 Dark-eyed Juncos
3 American Goldfinches

Retrapped 27:
1 Blue Jay
4 Black-capped Chickadees
3 White-breasted Nuthatches
1 Hermit Thrush
2 Blackpoll Warblers
1 Northern Cardinal
7 Chipping Sparrows
3 Song Sparrows
1 Swamp Sparrow
1 Eastern White-crowned Sparrow
2 House Finches

ET’s: 51 spp.
Rick