Pictorial Highlights, March 2003

POWDERMILL NATURE RESERVE
PICTORIAL HIGHLIGHTS
March 2003

Wednesday, March 26 through Sunday, March 30, 2003: This banding period started out with typical late March conditions--overcast, drizzly and seasonably mild. By the middle of the period, however, a strong cold front approached from the west, and strong winds precluded banding on 3/28. Conditions on the 29th were moderate to begin with, but temperatures dropped all day, and drizzle changed to snow. The spring/winter mix of weather is well-ilustrated by this photo of some hearty Kaufmann's tulips growing outside our banding lab on the 29th.

By the morning of 3/30, nearly four inches of heavy wet snow had accumulated at Powdermill, with even more on the adjacent ridgetops.

Just before the weather turned colder on 3/29, we banded our first Yellow-rumped Warbler of the season, but we can't be sure whether it represented an overwintering bird or a very early migrant. It is only our second March banding record for the species (one was banded on the same day, 3/29, in 1997), but we have also banded a few wintering birds in January (two records) and February (six birds). A second year (SY) female, the bird was in entirely worn first basic plumage, showing no signs of any active or completed prealternate body or wing covert molt.

The heavy snows brought a not unexpected influx of birds to our feeders (and into our feeder traps) on the last banding day of the period, notably Dark-eyed Juncos (17 banded), Fox Sparrows (5 banded; photo by Mike Lanzone below is one of up to a dozen feeding at one time outside our banding lab), and our first Chipping Sparrows (3) of the season. The photo of the CHSP below is of an after second year (ASY) bird--note the very dark distal alular feathers (lower left of the photo) with their rich edging coloration.

Earlier in the banding period, before the snows, we banded our first Rusty Blackbirds of the season--female (top) and male (bottom)

SY male Red-winged Blackbirds like the one pictured below are easily distinguished by their duller epaulet coloration compared to ASY males (compare with photo of ASY male below), but for many icterids, which can have a very extensive, even sometimes complete first prebasic molt, SY and ASY birds can appear very similar overall in the spring.

In this family, the last juvenal feathers to be replaced frequently are found among the underwing coverts, so banders should always examine the underwings of blackbirds (like those of the SY-M RWBL shown in the bottom photo below), cowbirds, and grackles (Note: contrasts between juvenal and basic underwing coverts in females of these species ordinarily are much more difficult to discern; furthermore, depending on the species and/or populations being studied, the absence of any retained juvenal underwing coverts may or may not be confidently interepreted as evidence that the bird is an ASY individual).

Wednesday, March 19 through Sunday, March 23, 2003: With about the same effort as last week (190 net hours vs. 210), we banded almost the same number of birds (53 vs. 52). Represented in this week's total, however, were 16 species (vs. 10 last week), including seven new species for the season. Our first Red-winged Blackbirds to band--all of them adult (after second year, or ASY) males like the one pictured below left--and the sight of alders everywhere bearing the weight of hundreds of tasseled, pollen-laden catkins (photo below, right) were evidence enough (even without consulting the calendar!) that spring returned this week to the small ponds and wetlands in our banding area.

Another spring banding first during the week was this pair of House Sparrows (male left; female right).

We netted our first Field Sparrow (bird at right in photos below) of the spring on 3/22, alongside an American Tree Sparrow (bird at left in photos below) that very well may be the last of its species that we band this spring.

Although each has a very characteristic bill coloration and differs from the other in overall head coloration (top photo below), the close similarity of body form (and body plumage) between these two sparrows in the genus Spizella is evident when the two are seen side-by-side (bottom photo below). If you look closely, however, you will see that the lower wing bar and the edging of the tertials (the three innermost flight feathers of the wing) are less extensively white in the FISP. In addition, although FISP is the smaller of the two species overall (body mass 12.2 g vs. 17.4 g, and wing 62.0 mm vs. 73.0 mm, on average), it has an almost equally long (and, therefore, a proportionately much longer) tail compared to ATSP.

(Note: in the photos below, the ATSP appears a little less neat than the FISP because it was undergoing limited prealternate molt of some of its head feathers).

Wednesday, March 12 through Sunday, March 16, 2003: Our first whole week of seasonable to even slightly milder than usual weather provided a welcome respite from the tenacious winter of 2002-03! Compare this photo of our Alder and Crisp ponds with the paired photos posted last week showing spring's minor progress to that point!

Many kinds of birds took advantage of the window of migration opportunity that the much warmer temperatures and southerly winds provided. For the first time since last fall, new bandings (52 birds banded) outnumbered recaptures (34). Our catch this week, similar to last week, was dominated by Song Sparrow (21), Fox Sparrow (12), Dark-eyed Junco (5), and American Goldfinch (5). Tufted Titmouse and White-breasted Nuthatch were new to our spring 2003 banding list.

The warmth brought with it some new arrivals that may not have made it onto our banding list, but which nonetheless greatly added to our enjoyment of the week--American Woodcock were first heard calling at Powdermill on the evening of 3/14, Eastern Phoebe and Belted Kingfisher returned on 3/15, and five Tree Swallows were seen over Crisp Pond on the evening of 3/16. Many observers in our region noted scattered large flocks of Ring-billed Gulls flying north beginning on 3/13.

Best of all this week was the heavy push of Golden Eagles at several hawk watches in the mountains of western and central Pennsylvania. At the hawk watch closest to Powdermill, the Allegheny Front hawk watch, a remarkable 81Golden Eagles were counted on the last three days of the week. The photo below was taken at Allegheny Front on 3/17, the first day that the Powdermill banders could visit. Although a repeat of the near record 32 eagles seen just one day before apparently was not in the cards, during our two hours there, we enjoyed a long and satisfying look at one Golden Eagle that flew slowly past just above the treetops.

Saturday, March 1 through Sunday, March 9, 2003: The month of March may have come in more lamb- than lion-like, but the winds truly roared overnight last night (3/8) as another fierce cold front attacked the warm (mid-50s°F) temperatures we had enjoyed all-too-briefly earlier the same day. Even so, over the course of the week, snow and ice cover have retreated gradually and migrant birds have advanced their cause little by little.

The top photo below was taken on Friday 3/7, following overnight freezing rain, and the bottom photo today (3/9), a cold, gray, and windy day that felt like more like mid-January than March, but which nonetheless still showed some hopeful signs (those hints of greening grass and reddening shrub stems) left over from yesterday's mini-thaw.

Among the 33 birds banded during this first week of spring banding were several expected early season migrants, including Fox Sparrow (3 banded), House Finch (3), Song Sparrow (8), and Dark-eyed Junco (9).

The photo below provides an example of when a molt limit isn't necessarily a badge of immaturity. Unlike the SY junco with asymmetrically replaced inner secondaries that we pictured last week, this ASY male junco banded on 3/8 had abnormally retained a single very worn greater covert amidst an otherwise uniform, entirely nonjuvenal wing plumage.

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