1000th bird and a notable visitor from the North

Thursday we captured our 1000th bird, a Blue Grosbeak that hatched this summer:

It's impossible to tell whether this bird is male or female at this age, so we simply write "unknown" in our band summary. In contrast, the adult male Blue Grosbeaks look like this in the fall:

This guy wasn't thrilled to be photographed, but he is the bluest Blue Grosbeak I've seen all fall (or ever, since I hadn't seen species before coming down to Alabama!). Hitting quadruple digits at this point in the season puts us ahead of the team last year at this time. Granted, they had two hurricanes to deal with and they managed to band about 1700 new birds, so I am hopeful we will band more than that by the time we close on Halloween.

Today we captured a White-eyed Vireo with a bill deformity. It always amazes me how animals can survive (and thrive) with physical challenges like deformities or injuries. This guy had middle scores for fat and muscle, so he's doing just fine finding food. Interestingly enough, his uropygial (preen) gland was huge! This glad is located on the dorsal side of the bird at the base of the tail and is a reservoir for the oil birds use to waterproof their feathers. With this bill deformity, this vireo can't preen the way other birds would.



We also captured our first Brown-headed Nuthatch today, too. These resident birds forage high in the pine trees around the site, so they are notoriously difficult to capture in ground-level nets. I think nuthatches have a lot of character, especially the Red-breasted ones I would see in Maine while I was capturing Black-capped Chickadees for an independent project in the spring of 2008. Brown-headed Nuthatches are smaller than the White- and Red-breasted species of the north; this one was only 9.1 grams.



Our "notable visitor from the North" came Thursday via airplane versus feathered wings. We are currently hosting Mary Garvin, a professor from Oberlin College (and long-time friend of Julie from Black Swamp. Small world, right?). Mary studies relationships between avian hosts and arthropod vectors of disease. Right now she is working on a project that concerns the volatile compounds in preen oil from the uropygial gland. She wants to see if these compounds act like an insect repellent, so she has come down to the site to sample Gray Catbirds.

Here's Mary spreading the feathers around a catbird's uropygial gland.


Then she takes a sample of the oil using a capillary tube. The sample will be weighed and then stored on dry ice until it is analyzed by a chemist back in Ohio.

It's a busy weekend down here at Fort Morgan- nearby Gulf Shores is throwing its annual Shrimp Fest, three of Jaci's sisters have come to visit, and another banding station is opening just down the road from ours, so there is plenty to do.

Happy holiday weekend- get out and enjoy the weather!