April 21st
proved to be an eventful day with the capture of our first Gray Catbird
for the spring....
Also, our first Black-throated Green
Warbler, this handsome SY male.....
And (the list grows on), our first
Solitary Sandpiper
Last, but certainly not least, our
first foreign retrapin several years!!!! With foreign retraps and
recoveries (birds found or recaptured >90 miles from their original banding
location) comprising fewer than 1000 of our over half million captures,
this certainly added a lot of excitement to the day. We haven't learned
just yet where this Blue Jay came from but have reported it to the banding
lab and are anxious to hear back soon (stay tuned!).
Sunday, April 23rd,
not only brought a few more new bird species but also lots of visitors
to the banding lab to witness the marvel of spring migration close at hand.
In the photo below, friends of Powdermill, the King-Somma and King-Nobles
families, couldn't have been any more excited than we were about seeing
our first Least Flycatcher for the season.
Also banded on Sunday was our first
Kentucky Warbler, this very handsome adult male,
And our first Wood Thrush.
Unlike the situation elsewhere in its range, cowbird parasitism is not
prevalent in Wood Thrush populations breeding at and near Powdermill.
Increasingly, though, concerns about ecosystem-wide changes in calcium
and other mineral availablility due to acid deposition is being implicated
as an explanation for declining trends even where forest fragmentation
and its associated negative effects do not pertain.
This Marsh Wren,
banded on 25 April,
was the first of its species captured at Powdermill in three years and
the first in spring in eight years.
We also banded
the first of four Red-breasted Nuthatches this spring on the 25th.
We have only banded this species in ten out of 45 spring seasons at Powdermill,
and our total of four this spring ties our highest previous spring banding
total in 1984.
The surprises
just kept coming as we rounded the bend into one of our net lanes on 26
April and saw our 8th ever Cooper's Hawk, a second year male.
While most birds banded at Powdermill
receive what's called a butt-end band, with the two edges of the band meeting
at a seam, "lock-on" bands are used for larger raptors to prevent them
from using their strong bills to pry the bands from their legs.
We managed to snap a shot of PARC
bioacoustic intern and University of Pittsburgh student, Emma DeLeon, at
the moment she released the Cooper's Hawk.
April 26 also netted us our first
Ruby-throated Hummingbird of the season. It's long thin bill profile
couldn't be more different from the
short, very stout head-on view of
the bill of our first Rose-breasted Grosbeak, banded on April 29.
