Pictorial_Highlights_101620

POWDERMILL NATURE RESERVE
PICTORIAL HIGHLIGHTS
October 16-20, 2002

Saturday-Sunday, October 19-20, 2002: With clear, calm, and very cool conditions overnight on Friday, banding assistants Brian Jones and Annie Lindsay made another attempt to band Northern Saw-whet Owls using an audio tape lure, but, again, without success. Weather conditions deteriorated rapidly early Saturday morning, and by dawn light rain was falling. We (with help from Brian and Annie) opened 35 nets to start, but the combination of increasing cold rain and wind led to very early net closing.

Weather on Sunday was altogether different--it dawned with light fog but otherwise the skies were clear. It became mostly sunny and very mild thereafter. The picture below of fall colors framing Powdermill Run (where it flows past the banding area) was taken on this beautiful Sunday afternoon. Mary Helen Chiodo and David Leibmann helped with banding on Sunday.

Despite the awful conditions for banding on Saturday, our banding total (67) was fairly good and the overall capture rate (78 birds/100 net hours) was high. Sunday was as different with regard to banding results as it was with regard to weather. With three times the effort compared to Saturday, we caught just about the same number of birds!

Among the 22 species banded on Sunday, White-breasted Nuthatch was new for the fall banding list. We banded another late Gray-cheeked Thrush, an extremely fat individual that weighed a record 52.7 grams (it just edged out the previous record body mass for >1,500 original banding records of GCTH at Powdermill, which was 52.6g). Another interesting bird banded today was an orange variant adult White-throated Sparrow--rather than the usual bright yellow, this bird had bright orange lores. We posted a comparison picture of a similar bird in October 2000.

Friday, October 18, 2002: Clear and very cold (30°F) overnight. Because our mist nets had been closed in the rain yesterday and didn't have a chance to dry out before dark, the heavy freeze made it impossible to open any nets until they began thawing several hours after sunrise. By 10:30am we had managed to get about 30 of our nets open, and we operated these on what turned out to be a beautiful sunny fall day until about 2:00pm, when increasingly gusty winds necessitated their closing. Annie Lindsay and Darlene Madarish helped with the banding today.

In spite of our late start this morning, we managed a fairly good banding total (64 birds) with just 100 total net hours of effort, for an overall capture rate that was on a par with yesterday. White-throated Sparrows again dominated the catch, although not by quite as much (one third of the birds banded today were WTSP, compared to half yesterday). We banded four more Winter Wrens today, bringing our fall total to 42--this matches our total on the same date last fall, when we ended up banding a record 58 WIWRs..

We banded a late Cape May Warbler (only ten have been banded on a date later than today, the latest being on 10/27/65). And, oddly enough, our first Green Heron of the season provided our second latest banding date for the species (the latest was banded on 10/30/91). Our thanks to Darlene Madarish for taking and cleverly editing the first of the two photos of the GRHE below.

Thursday, October 17, 2002: Very cool, calm, and overcast early AM and throughout most of the day. We operated 40 nets from 6:45am until it began raining just after 2:00pm. Mary Helen Chiodo and Annie Lindsay helped with the banding.

We were finally in a position today to catch a good number of the many birds that have been in the banding area over the last few days. For just the third time this season we banded >200 birds, and our capture rate (72 birds/100 net hours) was the second highest we have recorded so far this fall on a day with more or less full-scale banding effort (we banded 73/100 on 9/25). There were no new species among the 25 species banded today--highlights were a late Gray-cheeked Thrush (ties for the fifth latest fall banding date for the species at Powdermill) and our fourth Orange-crowned Warbler (an HY-M) of the fall. We never can seem to resist taking pictures of an OCWA, so here's another!

We banded more White-throated Sparrows today (105) than we have banded all season long up until today! In fact, almost half of our total of 216 birds banded today came in the form of WTSPs. The vast majority of these (83) were adults, which form the vanguard of the fall migration of this species. Among all of these WTSPs, one bird stood out from all the rest, being, without question, the brightest individual we have ever seen in fall (i.e., in basic plumage); possibly even brighter than any spring (i.e., alternate plumaged) bird we've ever handled. And, coupled with its exraordinary plumage, the bird was by far the largest of its kind we have ever encountered! Its wing easily measured 82.0mm (unflattened wing chord), and its tail was 81.5mm. A recently analyzed sample of some 12,000 WTSP banding records from Powdermill has no bird with a wing measured over 79.0mm; furthermore, 78.0mm for wing and tail are given as the maxima for males of the species in Pyle's (1997) Identification Guide to North American Birds. Interestingly, we had another WTSP today whose wing measured 80.5mm., and although it was decidedly a "bright" morph bird, it just couldn't compare to the bird pictured below).

So, without further fanfare, we give you these two views of this one-in-who-knows-how-many White-throated Sparrow...

Wednesday, October 16, 2002: Plenty of birds seemed to have moved into the banding area over the course of the two days when the station was not in operation, and we looked forward to a very good start to this week's banding. Unfortunately, very cool temperatures coupled with steady light showers all but prevented any banding effort today. In fact, were it not for a scheduled banding demonstration for scientists from around the world attending a conference at Powdermill on the biology of shrews, we likely would not have opened any nets at all. However, with help from Darlene Madarish and Randi Gerrish, we cautiously opened and closely monitored ten nets for a couple of hours this morning.

Our catch of 26 birds of 11 species (including two new species for the fall: Fox and White-crowned sparrows) made for a good banding demonstration for the 15 or so shrew conference participants who visited the banding lab early this morning (France, England, Russia, Poland, and Switzerland, were among the countries represented). And, given the very limited banding effort (and, notwithstanding the very poor conditions for catching birds), it also made for our highest capture rate (by far) so far this season. In the photo below, the group looks on as a Song Sparrow is processed in our lab.

Last week we posted pictures of a Golden-crowned Kinglet male and female to show what their crowns looked like when relaxed and when flared aggressively. We pointed out that, unlike GCKIs, both sexes of which have visible crown patches, Ruby-crowned Kinglet females have no contrasting crown patch, and the male's bright ruby-colored crown patch is entirely concealed by green feathers most of the time. Thus, there is really no way of knowing on the surface whether the tiny (ca. 6 gram) RCKI pictured below is a male or female.

Because the RCKI male almost never raises its crown feathers aggressively during banding (again, unlike the GCKI), in order to show the crown patch of a male banded today, its crown feathers had to be parted by hand and a picture taken rather quickly before the bird drew its greenish head feathers back together, covering up the ruby red crown patch once again.

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