Because it seemed to be running on the late side from the beginning, we decided to extend our spring banding schedule past the end of May to the end of the first weekend in June.   Our summer season banding will begin on Tuesday, June 7, when we will assume a four day a week banding schedule, generally operating the station on Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday each week, weather permitting.  Following this update, website updates will be monthly until August, when we will resume more frequent (as often as weekly) updates.

As quickly as the pace of spring migration picked up at Powdermill through the third week of May (see last week's notes and highlights), it trailed off just as quickly in the last two weeks.   However, species that are strictly passage migrants at Powdermill, like Tennessee Warbler, Mourning Warbler, Northern Waterthrush, Lincoln's Sparrow, Gray-cheeked Thrush, Olive-sided Flycatcher, and Yellow-bellied Flycatcher, continued to caught as late as the last two days of May and the first few days of June.  These are late-migrating species, however, that fairly commonly trickle into June in migration (see spring migration timing charts included in the Spring 2003 summary) .  So, while the spring flight did seem to peak later than usual (mostly the result, it seemed to us, of there being no real earlier peak of migration in April), as of the end of the official spring season, it does not show signs of extending unusually far into June.

During the last two weeks of our spring banding season, the most commonly banded birds were Cedar Waxwing (52), Magnolia Warbler (30), Red-eyed Vireo (21), American Goldfinch (20),  Song Sparrow (19), Traill's Flycatcher (17), Yellow-bellied Flycatcher (10), and Mourning Warbler (9).
.
We want to thank Emma DeLeon, Jessica Maggio, Trish Miller, Pam Ferkett, Grace Greenwood, Annie Lindsay, Cokie Lindsay, Fred and Carol McCullough, Joe Schreiber, Carole Shanahan, Josh Van Buskirk, Molly McDermott, and Matt Shumar for their help with the banding during this period.

• Although it was not mentioned in the immediately preceding notes and highlights (primarily because no pictures were taken of it!), we banded our first Olive-sided Flycatcher on May 21.  In fact, it was our first OSFL in more than a year.  We missed banding the species entirely last spring and fall; in fact, we have only banded two spring birds in the last eight years (1997-2004).

.
Fortunately, we got two more photo "ops" for this species during the last two weeks of the spring 2005 season, on May 24 and May 29.  The behavior of these two OSFLs in the hand could not have been more different.  One posed very calmly, and even looked a little dopey, like it might already have drunk "three beers,"

• On May 27, we caught and banded our tenth ever Broad-winged Hawk (and our first one in eight years).

• Such an unusual catch was cause for summoning everyone in the vicinity to the banding lab for a look.  Mike Lanzone is holding the hawk; others in the picture (from left to right) are: Trish Miller (Mike's wife), Cokie Lindsay (Powdermill's Administrative Asst., hidden behind Mike), Dave Smith (Powdermill's Director), and Bruce Horner (Powdermill's Maintenance Manager).

• The hawk was aged/sexed as a third year (TY) male.  In the photo below, you can see that the outermost right rectrix is a retained juvenal feather, lacking the broad black-and-white band typical of adult Broad-wings.  The bird was sexed male based on its small size--unflattened wing chord, 259.0 mm; mass, 318.0 g.  Both of these measurements are on the small side for a male, based on data in Palmer's Handbook of North American Birds, Vol. 5).   A typical female would have a wing length >270 mm and would weigh 75-100 g more than our male did.

• Also on May 27, we caught a White-eyed Vireo with an eye color not unlike that we will expect to see in hatching year birds a month or two from now.  This bird, however, was a second-year adult.  Not only its retained juvenile gray eye color, but also its very unextensive wing molt (including no outer primaries or inner secondaries), reflected what almost certainly was a very late hatching date for this individual in 2004.

---

• The orange yellow eye in the photo below belongs to a Green Heron caught on May 28.  In herons and egrets the soft part colors generallly become more highly colored for the breeding season, especially in the males.  In the case of Green Herons, their usually light yellow eye becomes darker and oranger; the usually yellowish green fleshy area around and in front of their eyes becomes bluish gray; their legs also change from yellowish green to brighter orange yellow.

• Almost as big a handful as the Broad-winged Hawk banded the day before, the Green Heron was our first of the season.  It proved to be an ASY male in definitive alternate, or "nuptial," plumage.  The long, narrow gray feathers on its back, which are elongated back and scapular feathers, are the so-called "nuptial plumes."  In some other members of the heron family, especially the egrets, the decorative appeal of the specialized nuptial plumes of the breeding plumage led to devastating persecution of the adult birds.  They were indiscriminately killed in order to obtain ornate feathers for the millinery (women's hat) trade, oftentimes leaving their young to starve in the nest.  Thankfully, concern over this led to the formation of a National Audubon Society that quickly tackled this problem on public, corporate, and governmental fronts.  Because of their success in doing so, Great Egrets and other of the larger herons were pulled back from the brink of extinction.

• Nuptial plumes aren't the only specialized feathers that members of the heron family have in common.  They also have what are called powder down feathers hidden beneath the contour feathers on their upper breast.  In the picture below, the contour feathers are being blown aside to expose the yellowish powder down feathers.  When we blow on the feathers like this in order to examine the fat depsoits of Green Herons, a visible plume or puff of powder actually is dislodged from these feathers.  Whether actively, during preening, or passively, by sifting down through the plumage during normal activity, the fine waxy powder that comes from disintegrating powder down feathers of herons and bitterns may help keep their plumage free of oily residues from the quantities of fish that they eat.

• The Green Heron certainly helped make it a more interesting banding demonstration for David Leibmann and a few of his students from Shadyside Academy in Pittsburgh, who kept their scheduled appointment with us in spite of the rainy weather.  Because of the weather, we could operate only a few nets for a short time, but with the Green Heron and an adult male Scarlet Tanager among the half dozen or so birds caught, they told us it was worth the trip.  In the photo below (left to right) is banding intern, Jessica Maggio, Shadyside Academy students, Deirdre Sutula and Connie Parham, their teacher, David Leibmann, and another student, Jon Miller.

---

• On May 29, our friends Don and Donna McCarty, from Indianapolis, IN, visited us at the banding lab.  They were pretty well satisfied with a small parade of Empidonax flycatchers of four species, as well as a few late migrating warblers, but more than anything, they Don wanted to see a male Mourning Warbler.  The pace of banding slackened off by late morning, when it began to get hot, and Don and Donna decided to leave before we made our last net round of the day.  The first bird out of the net that round was the feisty Olive-sided Flycatcher pictured above, and we managed to shout the news to Don and Donna before they reached their car.  We cautioned that it might be a good idea for them to wait until we finsihed the net round to see what else we might catch, but Donna urged Don back to the car.  Well, Don and Donna, as luck (or Murphy's Law) would have it, look what we caught right after you left!

In case you doubt it, we had him sign the guest book right below your names!

---

• At Powdermill we use clean paper bags, rather than cloth bags, to transport birds from the mist nests back to the banding lab.  For most birds, this works very well, but for some kinds, it's a very temporary holding arrangement, even when we use a doubled bag.  So, any ideas whose beak is making a break for it?

• In general, you may have correctly guessed a woodpecker of some kind, but if you were observant enough to notice the dirt caked on the bird's bill, we'll bet you knew, specifically, it was a Northern Flicker.  Unlike most woodpeckers, flickers do most of their foraging on the ground, probing into ant hills for their favorite food.

---

• While we're on the subject of bird beaks... The two birds pictured below were banded in the same net round on June 1.  They shared more than the jet black and bright orange plumage of adult males of their species, Red-winged Blackbird (top) and Baltimore Oriole (bottom).  They also share a similar bill shape, stout and sharply pointed, that is one of the morphological characteristics that tells a taxonomist that they are members of the same, albeit very diverse, blackbird family (Icteridae).

Spring 2005 in review

With the exception of a few good catches, such as an ASY male Prothonotary Warbler in late April and the Broad-winged Hawk from the above highlights, it was a so-so spring flight, with only a couple species, like Magnolia and Chestnut-sided warbler, represented by well above average banding totals.  Similarly, only one or two species were banded in well below average numbers, most notably Dark-eyed Junco, the recent spring flights of which have been a fraction of their historical volume at Powdermill, with no obvious banding station habitat changes to explain it.  We discussed this decline in an update earlier this spring.

The spring 2005 season peaked in terms of both number of birds banded and species diversity on May 16-17: our total of 198 birds of 47 species on May 17 is one of our best-ever spring banding days.

Our overall 2005 spring banding total, 2,178 birds, was well below our long-term average of 2,735, but well within one S.D. of it.  The near absence of any substantial flight of juncos during the early half of the season, and the rather poor early portion (mid- to late April) of the migration of Neotropical wintering species, contributed most to our low seasonal total.  The latter half of the migration (mid- to late May) was rather good for many species.

CLICK HERE  to see a complete tabular summary of our spring 2005 final banding totals, with statistical comparisons to our long-term (1962--2004) data.

Last but not least, for help with the banding this spring, the Powdermill Avian Research Center banding program staff (Adrienne Leppold, Mike Lanzone, Bob Mulvihill, and Bob Leberman) are very grateful to those who attended our two bander workshops in April (Workshop I:  Cheryl Deane, Lisa Abernathy, Jessica Maggio, and Lannie Graham;  Workshop II:  Frank Rouse, Jean Bickal, Margaret Hahn, and Fred and Carol McCullough).  We also thank our regular volunteers Pam Ferkett, Mike Comley, Randi Gerrish, Carroll Labarthe, Molly McDermott, and Matt Shumar; our seasonal interns, Emma DeLeon, Grace Greenwood, and Jessica Maggio; and even a few visitors whom we pressed into service, like Emma's parents Bob and Donna DeLeon, Amy Smith, Maria Somma (and her husband David King and their boys, Austin and Aaron), Joe Schreiber, and Josh Van Buskirk.  Powdermill's Director, Dave Smith, and its Administrative Assistant, Cokie Lindsay, helped with the spring banding on several occasions and help with the Powdermill Avian Research Center programs in countless ways every day.  Thanks to everyone, including the readers of these web pages, for their continued assistance with and interest in our work.  We could not do nearly as much or as well without it!

.

Last Updated on 06/07/05
By Robert S. Mulvihill