RMBO Barr Banding, Last Day of Season (10/11/14)

[meredith]

Beautiful weather but pretty much no birds for our last day. By 10:30 we had banded 3 birds and recaptured 3 others.  The 3 new included 2 "unlikelies" for the last day of the banding season - a Warbling Vireo (only 3rd of season and 1st since 9/13) and a Nashville Warbler (semi-rare for our banding station and a FOS).

We got the station down, and then we ended the season by banding the 2 young Barn Owls that have been growing up in the nest box just beyond the banding station this fall. The eldest of the 2 seems very close to fledging - big, strong wings and talons, and very noisy (lots of hissing).  The other seemed quite a bit younger, still carrying lots of downy juvenile body plumage.  Last time we banded Owls from this box was in 2009, when there were 5 young. One of those was found dead after being hit by a car sometime within a year of banding.  (According to Cornell's Birds of North America, collisions with automobiles is a leading cause of death for Barn Owls.)

I'll be back in touch with a final report on the season in a few weeks!