Brrr! (it's 70F)

We had our first "cold" morning today- only about 70F when we left the house. For the first time this season, we were able to keep the nets open as long as we wanted because the morning temperature didn't reach 90F. The last few days have been windy and our catch yesterday was nothing to brag about, but the weekend was crazy busy (finally!). Here's a brief summary of our net results since I last posted.

Friday afternoon we had low abundance but great diversity. Highlights included our first Blue-winged Warbler and our only Golden-winged Warbler. I think Blue-winged (below) look like they are wearing Zorro masks.



Mason with the Golden-winged Warbler.

In total, we banded 52 birds of 28 species. We had 17! warbler species: Yellow, Tennessee, Prothonotary, Prairie, Northern Waterthrush, Ovenbird, Northern Parula, Magnolia, Hooded, Golden-winged, Chestnut-sided, Common Yellowthroat, Blue-winged, Black-throated Green, Black-throated Blue, Black and White, and American Redstart.


Saturday was a little slower with 42 birds banded of 18 species. Our top species were Northern Waterthrush (8), Common Yellowthroat (5), Black and White Warbler (4),and Red-eyed Vireo (4).


An adult Red-eyed Vireo, who is less than thrilled to be photographed.


We had a good-looking adult male "Cheeto head" Blackburnian Warbler at the end of the day.


Sunday was a big, big day. We finished with over 100 birds! The 105 birds we captured represented 33 species. New species for the site this season included Yellow-throated Vireo, Philadelphia Vireo, Nashville Warbler, and Indigo Bunting. Our most common species were Red-eyed Vireos (16, Common Yellowthroat (10), and Northern Waterthrush (10). Zoli has reached his quota for Northern Waterthrushes, so we stopped collecting them for him.

Monday was much slower. With high winds, we could only open between 18 and 20 of our 30 nets, which hurt our totals. By midmorning we had only caught 13 birds of 7 species, so we didn't go out in the afternoon. We did catch a few White-eyed Vireo (below)- a small but feisty bird.



Today we broke Sunday's record with over 150 birds banded, and we'll be going out again in a few hours to catch some more. The North winds are helping us out a lot- not only do they bring migrants heading south but they also bring relief from the heat and humidity! We had many American Redstart, Common Yellowthroat, White-eyed Vireo, and Gray Catbirds. We are putting radiotransmitters on catbirds for researchers at USM and others who work on the Yucatan Peninsula, so it was a good day to radiotag some birds.

Joanna with one of today's highlights, a Worm-eating Warbler.

I don't know what the afternoon will bring but I think it will be good. Today I noticed more birds at our site than I have seen there all season. Not only are they in the nets, but they are all over the vegetation too. The Fort Morgan/Gulf Shores area was hit head on by hurricane Ivan in 2004, and those who have worked at our site say that the landscape is very different than before that storm. As a result, it is a less-ideal place for birds to stop on their way south, but it is nice to see that they will still use the site before they cross the Gulf.

Bird Bonanza!

We've had our biggest day so far and are going out again this afternoon for a second shot at all the birds at the site. We've been seeing night hawks and owls regularly but have yet to catch any of these. A light northern wind helped us out a lot last night. Finally, the abundance is creeping up toward the diversity!

Here is today's count so far:

Least Flycatcher- 1
Prarie Warbler- 2
Yellow Warbler- 3
Common Yellowthroat- 2
Black and White Warbler- 1
Eastern Wood Peewee- 1
Blue Gray Gnatcatcher- 1
*White-eyed Vireo- 1
*Chesnut-sided Warbler- 1
American Redstart- 1
*Black-throated Blue Warbler- 1
*Black-throated Green Warbler- 1
Tennessee Warbler- 1
*Magnolia Warbler- 1
*Northern Parula- 1
Hooded Warbler- 2
Northern Waterthrush- 9
Swainson's Thrush- 2
Red-eyed Vireo- 2
Ovenbird- 1
Prothonotary Warbler- 2
Scarlet Tanager- 1
Summer Tanager- 1
*Blue Grosbeak- 1
Gray Catbird- 1
Northern Mockingbird- 1

*New species for this season

41 individuals, 26 species
We also recaptured a (resident) Brown Thrasher banded here last year. They're one of my favorites.


A brown thrasher caught at BSBO this spring.

The waterthrushes are particularly nice because a PhD from Frank's lab is using Northern Waterthrushes, Magnolia Warblers, and Indigo Buntings for some orientation experiments. Whenever we get at least two individuals from these species, we save them for Zoli. Because we had so many this morning, he drove down from USM immediately to pick them up. He's hoping to test them next week with another four waterthrushes we've caught previously.

Our first Swainson's!

As much fun as it is to catch lots of birds and band them, that's not really the reason Jaci (my boss) is here. Her Master's research is looking at movement of Swainson's Thrushes in terms of fat and age classes. Running a banding station is (theoretically) a great way to get access to "volunteers" for her study, and today we caught and radiotagged the first Swainson's Thrush of the season. The Swainson's Thrush will carry its radiotransmitter for a week or two before it falls off. Between now and then, we're hoping to pick up its signal via three fixed towers near the study site, tracking the bird by hand (in a car), and/or tracking the bird from a low-flying aircraft.

Here are the basic steps of this study:
1. Catch thrushes.
2. Attach radiotransmitters.
3. Listen for the radio signal and the figure out which way the bird flew!

Unfortunately, I forgot my camera today but here's a REVI we put a transmitter on last week (more reasons why we are putting transmitters on REVIs is coming in a later post).


The transmitters are sewn to a small piece of fabric and then glued directly to the bird. Our method uses both eyelash glue and superglue. Eyelash glue is applied to the center of the bird's back over the spine after the feathers have been cut away, and also applied to the fabric directly under the transmitter. We use superglue to hold down the edges of the fabric and has the advantages of extra strength and short drying time. (Eyelash glue is more flexible, but less strong.)
Jaci will go out this afternoon and program the radio towers to "listen" for the particular frequency of the radiotag on the thrush. The towers have 8 different receiving antennae, and by plotting the strength of the signal from each of these, we can tell which way the bird flies when it leaves the area. The underlying assumption is that certain birds will fly south across the Gulf to the Yucatan penninsula (where there are other towers that will listen for our birds), and other birds won't fly south.

Let's see if you can guess which birds we assume would fly south . . .

Birds, bugs and . . . bats?

The birds have been few, the bugs have been many, and today I found a bat roosting about four feet above the ground in a Wax Myrtle tree. My best guess is an eastern red bat (Lasiurus borealis). Here' what Bat Conservation International's website has to say about them:
"Eastern red bats are North America's most abundant “tree bats.” They are found wherever there are trees east of the Rocky Mountains from Canada to as far south as central Florida. Eastern red bats roost right out in the foliage of deciduous or sometimes evergreen trees. Despite their bright red color, these bats are actually rather cryptic, looking like dead leaves or pine cones. They are perfectly camouflaged as they hang curled-up in their furry tail membranes, suspended from a single foot, twisting slightly in the breeze."

Enjoy the photos!

A bird in the hand . . .

The southerly winds haven't brought us great numbers of migrants, or really any migrants. Migrants want northerly tailwinds to help them fly to their wintering grounds in Mexico and Central and South America. It's a long trip across the Gulf of Mexico, and it is too dangerous and taxing for birds to fly 1,200 kilometers against the wind. Recent daily totals have been in the single digits, and field crew morale was low. It becomes frustrating to do net runs twice an hour only to return empty-handed several times in a row. We planned a birding trip for Friday to Dauphin Island and other ornithological hotspots around Mobile Bay, where there could be more birds for us to see. We just had to get through two more days before we could take the afternoon off to see what else coastal Alabama had to offer.

Thursday dawned buggy, humid, and windy (from the South). We've started hearing some Killdeer making morning flight calls which is fun, but otherwise it was painfully slow in the morning. We recaptured a male Prothonotary warbler in the first round, but the site was pretty quiet after that (one Ruby-throated Hummingbird, which we release without banding because they require a special permit).

Then Nakita comes back to the banding tent with a large bird in his hand- a nice change from the little warblers and gnatcatchers we've been catching. Since Nakita's banding and birding experience is predominantly Russian/European, it is always nice for him to see something new, and he now he had just extracted his first cuckoo.

Cuckoos are unmistakable with their downward curved bills, long tails with well-defined white spots, and slender but medium-sized bodies. Also, cuckoo feet are zygodactyl, with two toes pointing forward and two toes pointing back, a characteristic shared by woodpeckers. (Most other birds have three toes pointing foward and one pointing backward).

This was a pretty exciting bird for us: Mason had never banded a Yellow-billed Cuckoo before and enjoyed handling this unusual bird. Jaci and I were a little surprised when he identified it as an after hatch year bird, because it's underside was a buffy color, not the white of an adult Yellow-billed Cuckoo. We also thought it was unusual that the bird was molting.



Some birds molt flight feathers individually, showing different lengths or colors of feathers in the wings and tail.

Molting, migration, and breeding are so energetically expensive for birds that they primarily occur independently of each other. Not to mention, it is hard to fly long distances without a full set of feathers! But it is not unheard of for some birds to do two at once, and we are familiar with molting birds because several of the resident Northern Mockingbirds at our site have been molting when banded.

We finish banding the cuckoo, taking some photos for scientific and personal use, and send it on its way. And then we start joking about what a funny looking Yellow-billed Cuckoo it was, and what if that's what it wasn't? Jaci used to play this game with her banders last season, and it is pretty easy to get stuck in the routine of identifying and banding birds based on what you expect to see.

We saw a cuckoo with a yellow bill, thus it was a Yellow-billed Cuckoo.


A close-up of our cuckoo's head.

The only other cuckoo present in the area during migration is the Black-billed Cuckoo. Which means it had to be a Yellow-billed, right? I mean, what else looks like a Yellow-billed Cuckoo with a buffy underside?

Jaci joked about the remaining species of cuckoo in the continental US, and flipped open a bird guide to see the chest color. Sure enough, the Mangrove Cuckoo has a yellow beak and a buffy chest.





When the realization that we had just released a non-migratory bird endemic to mangrove swamps, found in the US only on the Southern tip of Florida, and rarely documented outside that state dawned on us. The molting made sense in the context that this was a resident bird (in Florida!): Mangrove Cuckoos aren't migratory so this bird wasn't spreading its energy resources too thin by molting this time of year. We were all glad we had taken some personal photos- here was a bird none of us had ever seen before, much less handled, and wouldn't be likely to see again while we were at Fort Morgan. But even those photos weren't going to be enough to prove we had a Mangrove Cuckoo. We needed more measurements, particularly of the bill and tail.

Which meant we had to catch it again.

The next wild goose (or cuckoo?) chase was finding the bird in our site. I went on another net run before the rest of the team decided to go off on this errand, but apparently the bird was easy enough to find. Joanna noted that vagrants often are recorded as being rather docile and easy to photograph in their non-native locales, so perhaps the bird was more concerned with why and how it was here than the fact that it was being encouraged back into a net. By the time I got back, Nakita returned yet again with a cuckoo in hand.

Mason took some extra measurements, and there was no doubt it was a vagrant Mangrove Cuckoo. We took many more photos of the bird before letting it go this time.

I guess these South winds have brought us something!


The distinctive buffy underside of the Mangrove Cuckoo.


Mason STILL hasn't banded a Yellow-billed Cuckoo, but this was a pretty great trade-off : )

Greetings Ms. M's classes!

So, my sister, known to some of you as Ms. M., teaches at Euclid High School near Cleveland Ohio. She's been using my blog as an example for her students, who are also creating blogs.

To answer your question about comments on blogs, try these steps:

1. Sign into your blogger account (upper right corner of your blog's page)
2. Near "manage blogs" click the link called "settings."
3. Click on the "comments" tab.
4. Click "yes" to display comments, then manage who you want to be able to comment on your blog.

Let me know if you guys have any other questions (especially about my research!).

Best,
Jenn

AKA Ms. M.'s not-so-little sister.

Poor weather brings slow days

I haven't had too much to write about in the last few days because our birds have been few and far between. Over the weekend we had some scattered thunderstorms which have hit our site multiple times. At least there haven't been bad tropical storms though- Ivan hit this area directly back in '04.

Our scanty count thus far:
9/6: 16 individuals, 6 spp (including another whip-poor-will!)
9/7: 6 individuals, 6 spp
9/8: 5 individuals, 5 spp (our first Cardinal, my favorite to extract)
9/9: 12 individuals, 8 spp

Numbers aside, we have had our highlights. I saw my first Red-headed Woodpecker and am starting to contemplate making a life list, where I keep track of first sightings of every species I've seen. We also had our first black and white warbler, my favorite (male) warbler. This one is a hatch-year female (note the lack of black under the eye in favor of a buffy color).



We also had our first Canada warbler, a favorite of fellow BSBO groupie, Phil. This is also a hatch-year female; in adult males the "necklace" is black. The white eyering is always striking in this species.




Today we caught a hatch-year male Orchard Oriole, a species that was not caught at this site last year (so exciting!). Hatch year males look completely different in plumage from adult male Orchard Orioles, so it is easy to age these guys. The characteristic black throat pattern is only represented by a few feathers right now, but after one molt the entire throat will be black.

The first week in review

Checking out the blogs from other observatories, I thought I'd do an overview of our weekly totals (Aug 31- Sept 5) for anyone who is looking for fall migratory information at Fort Morgan . . . instead of just my ramblings about life in the field!

Species captured and numbers:
American Redstart- 1
Black and White Warbler- 1
Blue Gray Gnatcatcher- 6
Carolina Chickadee- 3
Carolina Wren- 1
Downy Woodpecker- 1
Great Crested Flycatcher- 1
Hooded Warbler- 1
Kentucky Warbler- 1
Northern Mockingbird- 2
Northern Waterthrush- 10
Ovenbird- 5
Prarie Warbler- 3
Prothonotary Warbler- 7
Red Bellied Woodpecker- 1
Red-eyed Vireo- 19
Trails Flycatcher- 2
Veery- 1
Warbling Vireo- 1
Yellow Breasted Chat- 6
Yellow Bellied Flycatcher- 2
Yellow Warbler- 5

Species Banded- 23
Total Birds Banded- 83
Net Hours- 848

In general, what we lack in abundance we make up for in diversity!

The beginning of the season

Yesterday we topped out at 31 new birds- 29 captures in the AM prompted us to go out again in the afternoon for a few hours in the hopes of catching some more. We were a little disappointed with only 2 new captures in 2.5 hours in the PM, but it was good practice opening and closing our nets.

Today was much slower (7 new birds banded) but I had a fabulous first round: a whip-poor-will, a ruby throated humning bird, a northern mockingbird and a Kentucky warbler. See pictures of the whip-poor-will and Kentucky above. It's always nice to have some crazy birds in the nets- whip-poor-wills are part of a group called "nightjars" and are nocturnal so you are only likely to catch them during the first round.

Otherwise, this morning's highlights included . . . net repair! Seeing as a pelican could have flown through one of our nets, it was time for replacement and repair. It can be really tedious work but ultimately rewarding if we catch more birds as a result.