Barr Banding Station Update, 9/29/15

[meredith]

My thought when I woke up this morning at 4:30 and realized it had rained overnight was "Oh boy, birds today!"  Ha.  The first run (which started a bit late, because it was still drizzling when we arrived) showed a slight promise, but then dwindled to nothing.  It got windy by mid-morning, but that really made little difference - we already weren't catching anything.  The 6 White-crowned Sparrows were caught at the feeder nets at the Nature Center.  The one excitement and ID challenge of the day was a young Swamp Sparrow.  We don't catch them very often, but we did have one last year on 10/2.  Here's the breakdown of the 17 new plus 1 return:

Black-capped Chickadee 1 return, banded 2013

Ruby-crowned Kinglet 1

Hermit Thrush 1

Orange-crowned Warbler 7

Yellow-rumped Warbler, Aududon's 1

Swamp Sparrow 1

White-crowned Sparrow, Gambel's 6

We are open 6 days per week, weather permitting, for 1 1/2  more weeks (through Sunday, October 11). This week we will be closed on Thursday, 10/1. We are opening nets at 6:30, and run until noon or whenever it gets too hot or too windy or too whatever. School groups arrive about 9:30 a.m. most weekdays.
 
Meredith McBurney
Biologist/Bander
Barr Lake Banding Station
Bird Conservancy of the Rockies