Presque Isle State Park Bird Banding

As the season for fall migrants slowly winds down (or the Yellow-rumped Warblers fly in for a dramatic finish), we continue to band new species! Numbers are also still up, even out at Erie Bluffs. Just yesterday, we caught and banded 29 birds there (a large number for that site). Two of the new and exciting birds we caught include Fox Sparrows and Purple Finches. We also banded a Northern Flicker that was the in-between color morph of the Yellow-shafted and Red-shafted Flickers. The picture below shows the outer primaries and inner secondaries are yellow, and the middle flight feathers are an orange-ish/red color.



We had an interesting catch at both Frye’s Landing and Erie Bluffs: HY White-crowned Sparrows. These birds do not acquire their stereotypical black and white crown stripes as a HY bird… and so they took a little bit of thinking to identify at first. The second time we caught these birds, we had no problem with ID.











Here are the HY White-crowned Sparrows on the left, and the AHY on the right.

This past weekend, Andrea and Linnea took a mini-vacation in Allegany State Park, in NY. We greatly enjoyed the beautiful fall colors, hiked all over the park, and crawled in some small caves. We couldn’t stand being away from birds and bird banding for a full 2 days (as opposed to their normal 1 day off per week), and met Tom LeBlanc, a bander in Allegany SP who bands Northern Saw-whet Owls (NSWO). He graciously took us on net checks from about 8pm to 11pm, and we also got to sit in his warm house in between net checks. We were super excited when we found 2 NSWOs in the nets on our second net run!! We each banded one owl, and practiced ageing and sexing it. Tom showed us all the tricks of the trade, so we are now even more prepared to catch one at Presque Isle. Unfortunately, the weather and our schedules outside of daytime banding did not allow us to go owl banding this week. Hopefully the weather will clear up next week, and perhaps we will net our first owl here.

Here's a picture of Linnea holding a NSWO, and Andrea in the background, putting a band on her owl's leg.



Below are two new species: Fox Sparrow and Purple Finch



List of the new species we've caught since the last update:

Erie Bluffs:
10/22/09- Golden-crowned Kinglet, Brown Creeper, White-crowned Sparrow, Hermit Thrush, Fox Sparrow

Frye's Landing:
10/21/09- White-crowned Sparrow, Fox Sparrow

Niagara Boat Launch:
10/17/09- Purple Finch