Pictorial Highlights_ 101326

POWDERMILL NATURE RESERVE
BANDING NOTES AND PICTORIAL HIGHLIGHTS
October 13-26, 2003

October 13-26, 2003: First, our apologies--because of how busy we've been with the banding and other projects here at Powdermill this fall, we have been unable to keep up with our daily (or even weekly!) updates. Photos from the last two weeks have accumulated, making it a little difficult to do justice here to all of the foregoing banding days. Our fourth and final bander development workshop, attended by Bill Teetz, Cindy Marino, Sandra Wilmore, and Kelly Williams-Seig ran through the end of the period being summarized here. Throughout all the workshops, we have been greatly impressed by the professionalism and dedication of those who went to the time, trouble, and expense of attending. Many of the workshoppers scheduled their limited vacation time around the workshop that they attended, and they came to Powdermill from as far away as Ontario, Massachussetts, Indiana, New York, New Jersey, Ohio, and Virginia. Our friend and visiting ringer, Dr. David Norman, left Powdermill to return to England on Sunday 10/19. His help for a month with the daily banding and with the execution of two of our four bander workshops was invaluable, and his company was, as always, a great pleasure for all of us. Thanks to all the workshop attendees, to Professor Norman, and to all of our usual banding volunteers for their help to this point in the season.

Over the course of the last two weeks, 1,708 birds of 52 species were banded and another 250 birds were processed as recaptures. Our fall 2003 total currently stands at 6,145 birds of 103 species banded. Among four new species for the fall since we last posted totals was our first Eastern Screech Owl. A gray phase hatching year bird (bottom bird pictured below), it provided a good photographic comparison with a beautiful bright red phase HY bird (top bird below) that we banded earlier in the fall, shortly after it was rescued by Kandi Newell from inside a neighbor's house (i.e., it was not caught in our nets, so it is not included in our fall totals).

The first Northern Saw-whet Owl in our nets on 10/25 wasn't a new bird to band for the fall, because it was a recapture of a bird banded here last November!

Although we heard many more in the banding area that day, we banded only one Pine Siskin (an HY-U; photo below), our first of the fall, on 10/15.

The bird of the last two weeks was the White-throated Sparrow--with 293 banded, it just edged out the second commonest bird, Yellow-rumped Warbler (289). One of WTSPs was a "partial alnbino," having excess white feathering on the sides of its head (top photo below) and on its sides and belly (bottom photo below).

On 10/22 we broke a long-standing one day banding total for American Robin. The previous record was 19 AMROs back in 1969, but on 10/22 we banded 22. One of these showed a bill deformity from avian pox like those reported many times before this season at Powdermill and elsewhere. A interesting observation concerning the group of robins that we banded on 10/22 was that the majority had molted their central rectrices, something not reported to occur in this species according to Pyle (1997).

Thus far this fall, we have not had a very good flight of Dark-eyed Juncos--one of the adult DEJUs banded last week, however, was unusual in two respects: first, it had an extra carpal covert on its right wing, and, second, it had failed to molt that feather during its complete prebasic molt. We have several cases of juncos having skipped individual feathers, and a few cases of supernumerary alula or tail feathers, but never one with the combination of both anomalous phenomena!

We mentioned in our previous photo highlights about the Henslow's Sparrow with the supernumerary rectrices that Dr. Kenneth C. Parkes, Senior Curator Emeritus of the Section of BIrds at Carnegie Museum of Natural History, had written a note about the phenomenon, but we did not have the citation to pass along at that time. We thank Section of Birds Collection Manager, Robin Panza, for sendiing us a reprint of the article, "Supernumerary rectrices," which was published in the Bulletin of the British Ornithology Club in 1996 (116:123-125). In that paper, Dr. Parkes reiterated details he published earlier (Condor 52:138) concerning a specimen of Yellow-winged Vireo (Vireo carmioli) from Costa Rica in the collection of Cornell University that he observed had three supernumerary tail feathers (i.e, fifteen rectrices in all). Like our Henslow's Sparrow example, the extra feather follicles of this vireo were duplicated laterally, rather than dorsoventrally, and all the rectrices were morphologically normal, making it difficult to determine which of the additional rectrices were, in fact, supernumerary.

On 10/25, we banded our first Rusty Blackbirds of the season. In the first photo below is a HY male in profile. The second photo below was an attempt at a different angle on the same bird, but in one of the attempted photos it "blinked." We thought it was interesting, so we photoedited two shots together--one in which the nictitating membranes obscured the bird's bright whitish yellow eyes, and the other with its eyes white open!

We close with some photos of our final bander development workshop (10/20-10/26), and with our sincere thanks again to all those who helped make this and the other workshops so productive and enjoyable.

Sandra Wilmore photgraphing the wing of an HY-U Carolina Wren just banded by Bill Teetz

Kelly Williams-Seig (left) examining the skull of a White-throated Sparrow;
Cindy Marino (right) checking the Pyle guide, wearing a hat she made herself!

Bill Teetz examining the plumage of a Brown Creeper

A not-too-great group photo (sorry guys!)
Back row: Bill Teetz; middle row, left to right: Cindy Marino,
Sandra Wilmore, and Kelly Williams-Seig;
front row: Puppy in motion!

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