Pictorial Highlights_ 051218

POWDERMILL NATURE RESERVE
PICTORIAL HIGHLIGHTS
May 12-18, 2003

Thursday-Sunday, May 15-18, 2003: The weather during the first three days of the period was overcast, drizzly, cool, and breezy; the sun peeked through from time to time on Sunday, but temperatures remained unseasonably cool, and wind remained a factor. Banding demonstrations were provided to several groups totalling more than 150 people over the course of these four days. We received much needed help with the banding and these demonstrations from Mike Lanzone, Brian Jones, Carroll Labarthe, Annie Lindsay, Nathan Tarr, David Liebmann, and Dr. Diane Pick, who deserves our special thanks for helping us on a daily basis over the last two weeks. Diane travels extensively, and she first visited us two springs ago, returning to help us with the banding for an extended period in fall 2001. We're very glad that she worked us into her itinerary again this spring--Happy Trails, Diane!

Over the last four days, we banded 340 birds of 54 species (five new for the spring), and this carried us over the 2,000 birds and 100 species marks for the season. A total of 149 of the birds and 21 of the species banded during the period were wood warblers. Two warblers, Blackpoll Warbler (top photo) and Yellow-breasted Chat (bottom photo), were among the five new species added to this spring's list.

One of the other new species for us to band this spring was a bird that we have not banded here since spring 1999--an Olive-sided Flycatcher (photo below). We aged this bird after second year (ASY) based on its uniformly dark and relatively unworn wing plumage, which showed no molt limits among the flight feathers and/or primary coverts, as would be expected in an SY OSFL (see second photo below). As a group, flycatchers were very well represented in the banding totals for the past four days--44 flycatchers of at least five species were banded, with Least Flycatcher (17 banded) being the most numerous, followed by "Traill's" (14), and Yellow-bellied (11).

The string of cool, drizzly, and breezy days toward the end of this week coaxed more and more swallows to hunt for insects (emerging mayflies, in particular) over and around our small, marshy ponds. We banded four Northern Rough-winged Swallows (another new species for this spring; first photo below) and eleven Barn Swallows (second photo below; an exceptionally dark-bellied male with an especially deep tail fork) during the last four days of the week.

Lastly, in the course of preparing some PowerPoint "slide" programs this week (many thanks to Nick Bolgiano and the Pennsylyvnia Society for Ornithology for inviting me to give a talk about the Powdermill banding program at their annual meeting in Indiana, PA), I discovered that we lacked any good images of adults of a common species here at Powdermill, the Cedar Waxwing. We were able to fill that gap today, when eight CEDWs were banded, including three ASY males (one pictured below).

Tuesday-Wednesday, May 13-14, 2003: Because of the unseasonably cool temperatures, and drizzly, breezy conditions on Tuesday, we operated fewer than half our nets, and these were checked at much more frequent than usual intervals throughout the day. On the cold heels of last weekend's flooding rains, it was clear by Tuesday that some insectivorous migrants were beginning to feel the effects of difficulty in finding food. Swallows, in particular, were seen hovering at vegetation along the edges of our marshy ponds, rather than swooping freely through the air, because on the stems of the vegetation over the warmer-than-air water of the ponds was the only place that a few insects could be found. Fortunately for the birds, although Wednesday dawned very cold (with frost on our nets!), it also dawned clear and sunny, and temperatures quickly warmed into the 60s °F. Diane Pick and Mike Lanzone helped with the cold damp business of banding on Tuesday, and they, along with Randi Gerrish and Annie Lindsay helped with the banding on the much more climatically agreeable Wednesday. On that day, we enjoyed a protracted visit from friends at the Pennsylvania Audubon Society, including PAS's Executive Director, Cindy Dunn, and several of her organization's enthusiastic and helpful supporters.

During the PAS group's visit, we banded two new species for the spring, Gray-cheeked Thrush and Scarlet Tanager, among 95 birds of 34 species.

The most exciting birds for us to band in the last two days was a pair of Yellow-throated Warblers that the cool temperatures on Tuesday apparently forced down from the high sycamore treetops where they usually forage to the low brushy vegetation alongside our Barn Feeder Nets. YTWAs were first banded at Powdermill in 1974, and numbers of this more southerly distributed species increased locally in the following years. In recent years, however, they have not been much in evidence as breeding birds at Powdermill, and the last one (our 25th one of the species to band since 1974) was banded here in 1998. An interesting aspect of the pair banded on Tuesday was that the two birds represented the two possible subspecies in Pennsylvania--the female (top photo below) was an ASY bird of the midwestern white-lored race, the so-called "Sycamore Warbler," Dendroica dominica albilora; the male (bottom photo below) was an SY bird of the eastern yellow-lored nominate race, D. d. dominica. Out of the previous 25 YTWAs banded at Powdermill, only one other has been probably ascribable to the yellow-lored race.

O.K., what gives with the oddball grosbeaks?! After our possible hybrid Black-headed X Rose-breasted Grosbeak femalelast week, which had much thinner streaks than usual for a RBGR but with streaks across the upper breast unlike most BHGR females, on Tuesday we caught this female (presumably an odd variant RBGR), which had practically no streaks at all (and about the biggest beak we've ever seen!)