You’re not going to see many pictures in this post – we were simply too busy.

Opening at 6 AM I could see Orion almost right overhead and, more importantly, I could hear the call notes of numerous birds as they were winging their way across the sky. And then they got louder as they got lower….and lower. They would want to find a place to feed and rest before the sun came up and rendered them visible to avian predators. A LOT of them came down around Ruthven. We got good numbers of birds on all net rounds and several sizeable “hits” – mixed species feeding flocks moving through the shrubs and hitting a net or nets at about the same time. When the dust settled we had banded the highest total so far this season – 108 – with the most diversity, 31 species, 17 of them warbler species.

Banded 108:
1 Downy Woodpecker
3 Eastern Wood-pewees
1 Yellow-bellied Flycatcher
1 Blue Jay
2 House Wrens
1 Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
1 Veery
1 Swainson’s Thrush
3 Gray Catbirds
2 Philadelphia Vireos
25 Red-eyed Vireos
2 Tennessee Warblers
1 Nashville Warbler
3 Northern Parulas
1 Cape May Warbler
2 Chestnut-sided Warblers
8 Magnolia Warblers
2 Black-throated Blue Warblers
3 Black-throated Green Warblers
3 Blackburnian Warblers
1 Western Palm Warbler
21 Bay-breasted Warblers
3 Blackpoll Warblers
1 Black & White Warbler
1 Canada Warbler
4 American Redstarts
5 Ovenbirds
2 Common Yellowthroats
2 Rose-breasted Grosbeaks
1 Song Sparrow

ET’s: 59 spp.

A welcome addition to our migration monitoring team is a group now known as The Pipits – a takeoff on another group, the Larks. The Pipits have made the commitment to come out on Sunday mornings and help us do the census. The tradeoff is that while we get extra sets of helping eyes and ears, they get hands on training in birding….and having fun in an ecological setting. They certainly make the day better. Now if they could just learn how to bake……
Rick