• We added only two new species to our fall tally this week, the second, a Hermit Thrush, being the 101st species banded at Powdermill this fall.  Tuesday, September 28, the first day of the banding week, though shortened to just a couple of hours in the early morning by rains from Hurricane Jeanne, still netted us 79 birds of 25 species.  With overcast, stormy night skies, we expected that many migrants would not be able to move past the front created behind Jeanne as it moved off to the east, possibly resulting in a "good" banding day on Wednesday.  We didn't, however, quite expect our second fall bander development workshop to kick off with a "total immersion" course of 307 birds of 43 species!

• The 931 birds banded this week brought our season total to just under 5000 birds banded since the beginning of August. Taking first place this week, with 75 banded, was Swainson's Thrush, followed by Black-throated Green Warbler (69), White-throated Sparrow and Song Sparrow (54 of each), and Ruby-crowned Kinglet and Black-capped Chickadee (44 each).

• Mike Comley, Randi Gerrish, Brian Jones, Carroll Labarthe, Trish Miller-Lanzone, Annie Lindsay, and Felicity Newell all helped with banding this week.  We especially thank our four workshop participants--Clay Corbin, Fred Bassett, Virginia Duffy, and Tom LeBlanc--for their dedication to banding, for their hard work, their patience, and their very capable assistance all week long.  As usual, the teaching and the learning went in every direction this week!  Our thanks again to all of Powdermill's Fall 2004 bander development workshop participants.

From left to right (back row)--Clay Corbin (Biology professor at Bloomsburg Univ., PA); Mike Lanzone,
Bob Leberman, Bob Mulvihill, and Annie Lindsay (PNR); Fred Bassett (MAPS and Hummer Study Group
from Montgomery, Alabama); (front row)--Virginia Duffy (Braddock Bay Bird Observatory, Rochester NY),
Puppy Mulvihill and Adrienne Leppold (PNR); and Tom LeBlanc (Allegany State Park, NY).

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• Banded Thursday, September 30, this hatching year Yellow-bellied Sapsucker provided a nice comparison to our first sapsucker banded last week.  Unlike that bird, we were able to sex this one as a male because it had begun the replacement of its whitish juvenal throat feathers with red ones.

• We also banded our 234th and 235th Hooded Warblers for the season on Thursday, further extending our record high fall total for this species beyond our previous record of 189!  Workshopper, Tom LeBlanc, took this photo of one of the HOWAs, a beautiful adult male, posed to show off his extraordinarily clean, broad tail feathers with their huge white tail spots.

• This freshly molted adult (AHY) male Eastern Towhee, banded on Thursday, earned its place on the website just by being such a good looking guy!

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• A tired (and lost) racing pigeon grounded itself near the banding lab on Thursday.  It hung around the building for two days, eating, drinking, preening, and rooftop sitting, and, after regaining its strength, took off--for home, we hope!  Anybody recognize its band numbers??

• Friday, October 1st, we banded our two new species for the fall.  First, this hatching year female Rusty Blackbird (age based on incomplete skull pneumatization, not plumage, because (like most blackbird species) hatching year RUBLs ordinarily do not retain any juvenal plumage after the first prebasic molt.)

• and, this HY Hermit Thrush

 

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• Saturday, October 2nd - Like last week's adult male Tennessee and Connecticut Warblers, this adult male Black-throated Green Warbler is unmistakable, even in its "non-breeding" plumage.

• With the last one having been banded all the way back on September 22, we were a little surprised when we banded not one, but two Yellow-bellied Flycatchers on Saturday.  Both were unusually dark, especially in the color of their throat and upper breast.  Still, they had the distinctive "cute" appearance that we associate with this species--a product of their disproportionately large, rounded head (with a more conspicuous "ruff" of chin feathers than the other eastern Empidonax species--very noticeable in the top photo below), large eyes and small bill.  Like all small flycatchers, Yellow-bellieds can appear very relaxed when placed on their backs!

• Tom LeBlanc patiently stalked this beautiful Buckeye butterfly Precis lavinia coenia, a southern species that has only very rarely been observed at Powdermill, managing to get several great photos of it when it settled on the driveway in front of the banding lab.

• Finally, the last day of the banders workshop, and of the banding week, provided an opportunity for some more in-hand comparisons of ageing and sexing criteria.  In the photos below, Clay Corbin, Bob Mulvihill, Virginia Duffy and Fred Bassett take advantage of the chance for a side-by-side-by-side comparison of hatching year male, HY female, and AHY female "Western" Palm Warblers that were banded and processed within minutes of each other.

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Along with skull condition and definitive plumage characteristics such as the presence or absence of molt limits, eye color often can be helpful in ageing birds.  Sometimes the differences are striking, as when the eye color of immature Red-eyed Vireos and Eastern Towhees changes from plain brown to deep red from fall through spring, or when White-eyed Vireo juveniles eye color changes from dull gray to bright white.

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Even in generally brown-eyed species, like most sparrows and warblers, however, there usually is a subtle but discernable change in eye color as immature birds age.  In general, if there is a difference in eye color between young birds and adults, adults typically have the richer, reddish brown eye color, while immatures will have a comparatively duller grayer eye color.  Of course, excellent light is needed to see these subtle differences, and the word "comparatively" is key--a bander needs to observe lots of individuals of known age to see what constitutes a lighter gray-brown or darker reddish brown eye color for a given species, and the differences often are apparent only when two birds are compared side-by-side.  For example,  the redder brown eye color of the adult "Western" Palm Warbler pictured below left, compared to the grayer brown eye color of a HY PAWA in the photo on the right.

• On the last two days of the workshop, White-throated Sparrows started coming in in numbers, just about coincident with the trailing off of our catch of many wood warbler species.  On Sunday, October 3, sparrows of five species comprised nearly half of our total of 106 birds banded.  Tops among these were 24 WTSPs which encompassed the complete range of plumage morphs for this species from the clear bright, or white stripe, morph (top photo below) to the streaked dull, or tan stripe, morph (middle photo below).  In addition, our catch on Sunday also included an unusual, variant orange-lored adult (bottom photo below).

 

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Last Updated on 10/08/04
By Adrienne J. Leppold and
Robert S. Mulvihill