Things continue to be slow. On Monday, 9/29, we got more or less drizzled out; the weather cleared long enough for us to open the Nature Center nets and catch some White-crowned Sparrows for the school group, and that was about it.
Today, Tuesday, 9/30, we banded 12 birds: Black-capped Chickadee 1 Orange-crowned Warbler 2 Common Yellowthroat 1 Spotted Towhee 1 Song Sparrow 1 Gambel's White-crowned Sparrow 4 House Finch 1 House Sparrow 1 Cool birds of the day were 4 recaptured Bushtits. We banded these birds on September 4. I figured that we'd just caught a small number of a larger flock, but then we caught exactly the same 4 birds today, so I decided it was time to do a little reading. Cornell's Birds of North America says a flock of Bushtits can be 3 to more than 40 birds. This little flock is composed of 2 females (have yellow eyes) and 2 probable males. (Pyle, in Identification Guide to North American Birds, says you can't sex hatch year Bushtits based on eye color until after the end of the first fall molt, and all 4 of these birds were molting when we caught them on September 4 and were still in molt today. We were unsure of age based on other criteria.) Bushtits are an unusual species at Barr; they aren't even on the Barr Lake State Park Checklist. Banding records include 9 caught in 1996 and 1 in 2006. Now we have this little flock hanging around, molting, for almost a month! Okay. Station is open, weather permitting, through Sat. Then closed Sun and Mon. Open Tues through Sat next week, and that's the end of the banding season. We will take the station down at the end of banding on Sat, Oct 11. We are opening the nets at 6:50 a.m., and usually have birds back at the station by 7:30. We usually close between 11 and 12, depending on heat, wind, and number of birds. Meredith McBurney Bander, Barr Lake Station Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Colorado Birds" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/cobirds/b9e91788-6ea0-4618-a8f0-4e75cf9437b5%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
