Beautiful weather but pretty much no birds for our last day. By 10:30 we had banded 3 birds and recaptured 3 others. The 3 new included 2 "unlikelies" for the last day of the banding season - a Warbling Vireo (only 3rd of season and 1st since 9/13) and a Nashville Warbler (semi-rare for our banding station and a FOS).
We got the station down, and then we ended the season by banding the 2 young Barn Owls that have been growing up in the nest box just beyond the banding station this fall. The eldest of the 2 seems very close to fledging - big, strong wings and talons, and very noisy (lots of hissing). The other seemed quite a bit younger, still carrying lots of downy juvenile body plumage. Last time we banded Owls from this box was in 2009, when there were 5 young. One of those was found dead after being hit by a car sometime within a year of banding. (According to Cornell's *Birds of North America*, collisions with automobiles is a leading cause of death for Barn Owls.) I'll be back in touch with a final report on the season in a few weeks! -- 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/826bca42-dc90-4ceb-b5a6-3a5e6df67d55%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
