Pictorial Highlights_ 091621

POWDERMILL NATURE RESERVE
PICTORIAL BANDING HIGHLIGHTS
September 16-21, 2003

September 19-21, 2003: There was no banding on Friday 9/19 as the Hurricane Isabel (turned Tropical Storm Isabel) moved up into Pennsylvania, bringing steady rain and breezy conditions (although not as much rain nor as strong a wind at Powdermill as had been predicted). Fortunately, hurricane-related weather notwithstanding, our ringing colleague from Great Britain, Prof. David Norman, was delayed only a couple of hours in flying from Manchester, England to Newark, New Jersey, and finally to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on Friday evening.

Saturday dawned much cooler, foggy, and mostly calm, becoming mostly sunny and mild by late morning. With west winds predicted, Dr. Norman and Powdermill's Mike Lanzone left Powdermill well before light on Saturday morning to drive south to the famous Allegheny Front Migration Observatory, where fall passerine banding has been going on for the last 46 years.

AFMO is well known for its spectacular flights of wood warblers, especially northern nesting species like Blackpoll, Blackburnian, Black-throated Blue, Black-throated Green, Cape May, and Tennessee. Because warblers are the subject of the first volume of our planned Photographic Guide to Ageing and Sexing of North American Birds, a day trip to AFMO to collect some molt and plumage data and take photographs for these species (generally only caught in much smaller numbers at the Powdermill banding station) was very helpful. We are most grateful to Don and Joan Pattison for welcoming Mike and David to come down for the day and to all of the banders and volunteers present at AFMO for their hospitality and assistance. Photos below from AFMO are courtesy of David Norman.

The AFMO mountain pass banding site

Mike Lanzone photographing the wing plumage of a male Black-throated Blue Warbler in the "cave" at AFMO

Back at Powdermill on Saturday, we were very grateful to our own volunteers, Hope Carpenter, Annie Lindsay, and Brian Jones for their help with the banding.

Sunday was cool and partly cloudy in the early morning, becoming mostly sunny and warm by afternoon. Annie Lindsay and David Norman helped with the banding, and a visit to Powdermill for a little well-deserved R & R by Steve Hoffman, the hard-working Director of Bird Conservation for Pennsylvania Audubon, and his wife Lisa and son Merlin, turned into a long working day for all of them, as we took advantage of their interest by pressing them into service on a busy banding day carrying bird bags and scribing our banding records. In the photo below (left to right) Lisa, Steve, and Merlin pose with an HY male Sharp-shinned Hawk caught late in the day.

The two weekend days of banding netted us 315 birds of 51 species (three species being new for the fall). This brought our fall banding total to just under 2,500 birds of 81 species (of these just over 1,000 birds and 29 species are wood warblers). Tops among the birds banded this weekend were Magnolia Warbler (50 banded); Common Yellowthroat (23), Gray Catbird (22), Swainson's Thrush (17), American Redstart (17), Red-eyed Vireo (16), Hooded Warbler (11) and Yellow-bellied Flycatcher (11; 10 of these on 9/21). Saturday produced one new species for the fall, a hatching year (HY) Marsh Wren (photo below).

We banded two Eastern Tufted Titmice on Saturday--both were HY birds, but they were in very different stages of plumage development. One was in the last stages of its first prebasic molt, including replacement of all its rectrices, which is usual in this species, while the other was just beginning its first prebasic molt and was almost entirely in juvenal plumage, including all its rectrices. The birds were caught together in the same net, affording us this side-by-side comparison.

Another interesting comparison on Saturday was the rusty tertial edgings on HY birds of two wood warbler species. Many banders probably are familiar with this ageing criterion for Ovenbird (top bird in the photo below) and other Seiurus species, but fewer may know that this edging is present on the juvenal tertials of species in another wood warbler genus (can you guess the identity of the bottom bird?)

It's an HY male Connecticut Warbler. Rusty edging like this can be fairly prominent on the juvenal tertials of another Oporornis warbler, the Kentucky Warbler.

Several of the Common Yellowthroats banded on Saturday seemed to us to have unusually conspicuous eyerings, which made them look a little like miniature Connecticut Warblers.

This after second year (ASY) female Indigo Bunting was very unusual in having epaulets (lesser coverts) nearly as bright blue as a male's. As you can see in the photo below, these colorful feathers also were very worn, so they were part of the bird's alternate plumage. We will be interested if we catch this bird later in her molt to see if the bright coloration persists in her basic plumage.

New species to band on Sunday were White-throated Sparrow, Northern Flicker, and Ruby-crowned Kinglet (photo of HY female below)

September 16-18, 2003: Cool, foggy early am weather on 9/16 and 9/17, becoming sunny and mild by late morning; foggy and increasingly overcast on 9/18, becoming breezy as Tropical Storm Isabel approached from the southeast. Rain and wind on 9/19 associated with Isabel precluded any banding. Nocturnal flight calling (especially thrushes) was the heaviest we have heard so far this fall du ring net opening on the mornings of 9/17 and 9/18. Randi Gerrish helped with the banding on Wednesday.

Capture rates, if not overall daily banding totals, were much higher immediately preceding the appearance of Hurricane Isabel than the week prior. An immature female Belted Kingfisher on 9/16 was the first of this species that our new Powdermill banding associate, Mike Lanzone, had ever banded.

Mike was smiling, too!

Two new species for the fall 2003 banding list in the last few days were this hatching year Solitary Sandpiper

and two western race Palm Warblers (both HY females)

The much higher than usual incidence of bill deformities this season continued (see also last week's notes)--the HY female Magnolia Warbler below had a malformed upper mandible.

<HOME>

Return to Past Pictorial Highlights