Fall 2005  Pictorial Highlights October 18-23

• Typical of the advancing season, the total number of birds banded increased this week compared to last (from 985 to 1,057), as did our capture rate (from 42.6 to 75 birds/100 net-hours), while the number of species banded declined (from 50 to 41).   White-throated Sparrow (220 banded) topped this week's list of most commonly banded species, followed by Purple Finch (112), Black-capped Chickadee (104), Yellow-rumped (Myrtle) Warbler (94), Ruby-crowned Kinglet (93), and Dark-eyed Junco (74).

• The principal banding staff at Powdermill (Adrienne Leppold, Bob Mulvihill, Bob Leberman, Mike Lanzone, and Felicity Newell) appreciate help received from the following regular volunteers and visitors whom we pressed into service this week:  Randi Gerrish, Carroll Labarthe, Pam Ferkett, and Dan Snell and Regina Reeder.  In addition, these other Powdermill staff and interns always take time out from their work projects to help out with banding when they can: Annie and Cokie Lindsay, Jessica Maggio, and Emma DeLeon.  Thanks to everyone!

• Wood warbler diversity, in particular, continues to drop week by week and day by day.  Just nine species were banded this week (compared to 12 last week), including Tennessee (our 19th of the season--an immature bird of undetermined sex; top left photo), Nashville (our 63rd of the fall--an adult female; top right photo), and Orange-crowned (our fifth of the fall--an immature female; bottom photo), the last fall migrants of which commonly are banded at Powdermill at least to the end of October.

• A very surprising and unusual warbler catch, however, was the hatching year (HY) female Wilson's Warbler (photo below) banded on October 21.  Only 37 WIWAs have ever been banded at Powdermill in October, and all but five of these were banded during the first week.  The WIWA banded this week is the second latest banding record we have for the species.  The latest, an HY male, was banded on October 28, 2000.

• With 19 banded, it was our best week so far this fall for Golden-crowned Kinglet, a species that we never catch in the large numbers typical of some coastal and lakeshore banding sites.   By contrast, our friends at Braddock Bay Bird Observatory on the south shore of Lake Ontario not infrequently band upwards of 200 or more GCKIs in a week during their peak of migration there in early to mid-October.  One of eight GCKIs banded on October 20, the adult male GCKI pictured below, showed off his brilliant 'day-glo' orange crown.

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• Purple Finches were very numerous this week, with all age/sex classes being well represented.  There is considerable plumage variation among hatching year PUFIs, with many birds (like the one pictured below) clearly showing signs of precocious development of male plumage (i.e., a strong reddish or purplish tinge over their wing coverts and body feathers).  We have banded birds in plumages similar to this that did, in fact, prove to be males upon later recapture.  A cautionary note to banders, though--many adult female PUFIs can look just as male-like as these highly colored HY males, something that we have illustrated on our web pages in the past.

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• Two Northern (Yellow-shafted) Flickers (our fifth and sixth for the fall), an immature (HY) female (top photo below, without a black 'moustache') and an immature (HY) male (bottom photo, with a black 'moustache') were banded October 23.

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• An adult (AHY) female Red-breasted Nuthatch banded on October 21 was our first of this species for the fall.  Of note was her abnormal retention on both wings of secondaries 5 and 6 (the third and fourth flight feathers from the left edge of the bottom photo below) during what usually would be a complete definitive prebasic molt in this species.  The relatively very good condition of these skipped over feathers (i.e., their similarity to the adjacent recently molted feathers) suggests that they are not juvenal flight feathers and, consequently, that she is an older, i.e., after second year (ASY), adult.  This is because a second year (SY) bird would have been replacing its juvenal remiges for the first time this fall, and any retained juvenal feathers probably would be much browner and much more worn than the retained secondaries on this bird.

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• Another first for the fall was this sharp-looking HY Savannah Sparrow banded on October 20.

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• We banded our first Rusty Blackbirds, both HY females, on October 19 and 20.  Recently, we have begun cooperating with a bird conservation project  spearheaded by Dr. Russell Greenberg at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park's Migratory Bird Center.  The project is aimed at determining possible causes for observed long-term declines in numbers of this little-studied species on its boreal breeding grounds, as well as at migratory stopover sites and across its wintering range in the southeastern U.S.  In particular,  researchers are hoping to be able to use isotope and genetic analyses of feather samples to try and establish connectivity between breeding and wintering areas (and the migratory routes taken between these) for different populations of RUBLS.

Considerable annual variation is evident in the graph of Powdermill fall banding totals for this species from 1962-2004, but a trend based on a 5-yr. moving average (the brown line) suggests that the population(s) of this species that we sample at Powdermill may have peaked between the mid-70s and mid-80s and that, after a 10-yr. period of decline, it (they) may once again be heading for an upturn.

Although not a very sharp picture, the photo below shows a flock of some 60 RUBLs that has been roosting in some small wetlands in the Powdermill banding area over the last several days (the picture actually was taken a few days after the end of the week being reported on here).

• Last week we posted this statement...

• Despite a few efforts thus far, we are still looking forward to adding our first Northern Saw-whet Owl to the season totals.  So, may the coming October nights be moonless and calm!

• Well, October 23 was just such a night, and the owls didn't disappoint!  In the photo below (from left to right), Brian Jones, Felicity Newell, Mike Lanzone, and Chris Meny pose with the first three Northern Saw-whet owls (plus one imposter!) banded for fall 2005 (a fourth 'real' NSWO was banded later the same night).

Last Updated on 10/28/05
By Robert S. Mulvihill