Pictorial Highlights_ 100712

POWDERMILL NATURE RESERVE
BANDING NOTES AND PICTORIAL HIGHLIGHTS
October 7-12, 2003

October 7-12, 2003: Everyone involved in the third bander development workshop at Powdermill enjoyed a picture-perfect fall week, with peak fall colors, blue skies and (except for a fairly heavy frost overnight on 10/6) unseasonably mild temperatures. In addition to those pictured below, our thanks go to Hope Carpenter, Randi Gerrish, Carroll Labarthe, Trish Miller, and David Smith for their help with the banding and related workshop activities during the week.
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The third bander development workshop group (left to right):
Mike Lanzone, Joanna Taylor (workshop attendee), David Norman,
Barbara Chambers and Aura Stauffer (workshop attendees),
Bob Mulvihill, Puppy, Adrienne Leppold, and Bob Leberman

Below, Bob Mulvihill (left) and Bob Leberman (right) with the fourth workshop attendee,
Sandy Lockerman (center), who was not present when the top photo was taken

It was our busiest banding week thus far this fall--864 birds of 61 species banded (47 birds banded/100 net hours), plus 111 recaptures--and we are very grateful to those attending the workshop for their help. Our busiest day was 10/10, with 233 birds, followed by another very good day on 10/11 (215). Top species banded (totals in parentheses are for 10/10, 10/11, and all week) were White-throated Sparrow (45, 33, 129), American Goldfinch (37, 28, 124), Ruby-crowned Kinglet (22, 43, 116), Yellow-rumped Warbler (34, 29, 82), Song Sparrow (11, 22, 60).

For a lot of reasons, perhaps, it can be said that Powdermill's new Director, Dr. David Smith, has his hands full. Early on Friday morning, however, it was for the same reason as everyone else in the banding lab...

Bags full of birds!
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Busy as it was, there was still lots of time during the workshop week for discussion and instruction about species identification, age and sex determination, and measuring techniques. In the photo below, Aura Stauffer (left) and Barbara Chambers (right) compare Spizella sparrows.

During the workshop week, there were eight new species banded for the fall season, including this Fox Sparrow,

and, better still, this Henslow's Sparrow.

This particular HESP, already a fairly rare bird for us (only our eleventh to band in 42 years), distinguished itself further by having not one, but two supernumerary rectrices (i.e., extra tail feathers; 14, instead of the usual 12; see photo below). We subsequently checked 40 HESP specimens at Carnegie Museum of Natural History, and discovered no cases of supernumerary rectrices among them. Senior Curator Emeritus of the Section of Birds, Dr. Kenneth C. Parkes, who authored a note on the occurrence of additional rectrices in birds, and whom we visited at a nursing care facility near the Museum later the same day, could not recall having ever seen extra tail feathers in this or other Ammodramus species. We could not located a copy of Dr. Parkes' paper on the subject in time for this website update, but for those who may be interested, we will pass the citation along at a later time.

In the photo below, Powdermill's Senior Bander and the originator of the Powdermill banding program, Bob Leberman, holds the HESP in one hand and his Birds of the Ligonier Valley, with its cover illustration of a HESP by H. Jon Janosik, in the other. Our thanks to Prof. David Norman, our visiting ringing colleague from England, for pointing out that we should not miss this "photo op" as a fitting way to illustrate Bob's intention (in his planned semi-retirement) to begin work on a revised Birds of the Ligonier Valley. Hopefully, the new edition will be ready for publication in time both for the 30th anniversary of the first BLV and the 50th anniversary of Powdermill Nature Reserve, which will be celebrated in 2006.

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