Hi Cobirders,
The first activity of the annual RMBO picnic, being held this coming Saturday, August 25, is the official opening of the Barr Banding Station! We look forward to seeing many of you there! In the past week, staff and volunteers have been hard at work clearing lanes, putting up nets, and doing some training and refreshing of skills. The water level in the lake is LOW, which has allowed us to set things up a little earlier than usual. We don't know what the early spring and HOT, dry summer will mean to migration overall and banding at Barr specifically. But we can report that there is a lot of very healthy-looking smartweed and grasses that are in better condition that in recent years. Our resident migrant populations of Yellow Warblers and House Wrens seem to have done just fine, and we've seen a few early migrants coming through. Three partial days of banding (did not have all nets open any of the days) yielded the following: Mourning Dove 1 Western Wood-pewee 5 Dusky Flycatcher 2 Warbling Vireo 3 Black-capped Chickadee 5 new, 1 banded in 2010 House Wren 30 Virginia's Warbler 1 Yellow Warbler 50 new, 5 banded in prior years Townsend's Warbler 1 Common Yellowthroat 4 Wilson's Warbler 6 Chipping Sparrow 3 Song Sparrow 4 American Goldfinch 7 We will be open 6 days each week, weather permitting, starting this coming Saturday, August 25, and running through October 14. The day off will be a weekday and depend on when we have school groups. We will keep you posted about the schedule via this listserve. Hoping for a good fall, and looking forward to seeing many of you! Meredith Meredith McBurney Biologist/Bander Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory 303-329-8091 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Colorado Birds" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
