We had a late start today due to light rain.  We opened the nets about an hour late, and only opened 3 of our usual 4 nets.  One net is under a large tree and there was just too much dripping from the tree to be able to open that net.  The day was damp and cool, and bird activity was pretty slow.  We did manage to catch a total of 13 birds, 9 new and 4 recaptures.  The bird, or in this case, birds of the day were two varied thrushes caught together in the same net.  One thrush was already caught as we approached the net, and another that was perched nearby flew into the net right in front of us.  Totals for the day: Oregon Junco (5), Chestnut-Backed Chickadee (3), Black-Capped Chickadee (1), Bewick’s Wren (1), Red-Breasted Nuthatch (1), and Varied Thrush (2).

Thank you to the volunteers for coming out in less than ideal weather to help; Kim, Polly, Max, Emma, and Natalie.  We also had some neighborhood guests come to check out the banding, and release a few birds.

The next Saunders Site banding will take place January 15, 2012.  See you there!

Varied Thrush being processed

Written by Kira L. Wennstrom, edited by Mary Huff

It was a chilly, damp morning and bird activity was slow, but we still had some exciting moments.  We caught twelve new birds and recaptured seven, including:

Bewick's Wren recaptured at Shoreline CC on 11/26/2011

Oregon Junco–4 new
House Finch–4 new
Fox Sparrow–3 new
Pacific (Western Winter) Wren–1 new
Black-capped Chickadee–4 recaptures
Chestnut-backed Chickadee–2 recaptures
Bewick’s Wren–1 recapture

One of the recaptured Black-capped Chickadees had been banded at the SHCC station more than two years ago, so it was really cool to see him again. We also recaptured the infamous “Christmas junco”–infamous because he’s been lost from the hand at least twice and has been sighted on campus a couple of times since he was banded in February of 2011, and Christmas for his band combination (red and green on the left leg).

(By PSBO Board Member Suzanne Tomassi – Updated October 15, 2011)

This spring I was able to assist Bruce Beehler, Vice President of the Indonesia-Pacific Islands research program of Conservation International, on a climate change study that’s taking place in Papua New Guinea’s YUS Conservation Area.  The study is looking at a number of taxa, including plants, along an elevational transect on the island.  Dr. Beehler’s work of course focuses on birds, and for my part, I mist-netted from about 2,400, to 3,010m, cataloging species occurrences.

The species diversity is not all that high at that elevation.  While we caught more than 100 individuals on some days, and a total of 910 birds at our four stations, comprising 42 species.  Our captures included many endemics and near-endemics, isolated by the high mountain peaks of the Finisterre range on the Huon Peninsula, where the transect is located.  Spangled Honeyeater, Huon Bowerbird, Lesser Melampitta and Huon Melidectes all ended up in our nets, and we encountered the Emperor Bird of Paradise, Wahnes’ Bird of Paradise, Meyer’s Goshawk, and many others on our long hikes between camps. Altogether, we recorded 12 species outside of their previously reported range.  Each and every species I encountered was a life-lister for me, of course.

Mammals were a very rare sight, but we enlisted the help of the Woodland Park Zoo’s Tree Kangaroo Conservation Program’s employees, who had established the transect almost 20 years ago and YUS area more recently, in tracking a collared Matschie’s tree kangaroo.  We were rewarded with a great view of a mother and juvenile!

The transect runs from sea level to more than 3,000m, and nowhere was that elevation change more evident than along some of the trails we traversed! Despite having local porters carry our supplies, the walking was challenging, to say the least.  There are no roads where we were, and trails are steep, slippery, subject to landslides, and often crossed raging rivers in deep ravines.  Our travels were at the will and whim of the many local clans, and could be complicated, to say the least.  Fortunately, our hosts were gracious as well as being fascinating (as were we to them).  As excruciating as it would get to eat the tubers manioc and ‘kao kao’ day after day, we were never wanting for new experiences.  Whether it was extracting a new and wholly unfamiliar bird from a net, witnessing a “Sing-Sing” celebration, being awakened in my tent twice in one night by earthquakes, or waiting two days with no communication when the bush plane simply failed to come and pick me up, every moment was incomparable to anything I’d ever participated in before.  I’m grateful every day that the people of PNG are working together to protect the YUS Conservation Area, and I look forward to another trip up the transect to further document the ranges of the Huon’s unique avifauna.

White-winged robin mixed juvenile-adult plumage (S. Tomassi)

White-winged robin with different mixed basic-juvenile feathers (S. Tomassi)

Third white-winged robin with juvenile-basic molt limit

Blue-capped ifrita (S. Tomassi)

Feline owlet-nightjar (S. Tomassi)

Black-mantled goshawk (S. Tomassi)

Crown of the Huon bowerbird (S. Tomassi)

Spangled honeyeaters' bare-skin face turns from yellow to red when they are excited (S. Tomassi)

Spotted jewel babbler (S. Tomassi)

Papuan lorikeet on bird-shaped flower (S. Tomassi)

Returning from a net run in the high-altitude rain forest (copyright R. Hawk)

Morse Preserve: July 3^rd, 2011

By Emma White

In attendance: Ben Vang-Johnson, Clarice Clark, Mark Colombino, Jerry Broadus, Don Norman, Emma White.

Rufous Hummingbird 1

Chestnut-Backed Chickadee 2

Pacific Wren 5

Swainson’s Thrush 4

Cedar Waxwing 2

Orange-Crowned Warbler 1

Common Yellowthroat 1

Spotted Towhee 3

Song Sparrow 1

Oregon Junco 3

Purple Finch 3

Total: 26

Another day at the Morse Preserve!  Six of PSBO’s fabulous volunteers arrived at 5 am ready to band birds, even with the cloudy skies looming threateningly overhead.

As banding began and the day continued, it became apparent that today would be a slow day of banding.  By the end of the day we’d caught 26 birds, which was only half the number of birds we’d caught on June 12^th at Morse.  It was an extremely slow day.

A HY Pacific Wren that we caught today. This is one of 10 HY Pacific Wrens that we've caught so far this year.

At Morse this year, there have been an unusually high number of captured Pacific Wrens, and specifically, there have been an unusually high number of hatch year Pacific Wrens.  According to Don Norman, who was the original bander at the Morse Preserve when banding started there in the 1990s, there were very few, if any, Pacific Wrens present at Morse when the site first began.  This year shows how distinctly the numbers of these birds in this area have changed over time.  Even on a slow day when we only catch 26 birds, 5 of the birds we caught were hatch year Pacific Wrens.  Since the beginning of our banding this summer, PSBO has banded 9 Pacific Wrens, plus another 3 that were recaptures.  This is a very large number of one species of birds considering these birds were absent roughly 15 years earlier.  Interestingly, though, out of these 12 birds, 10 were hatch year birds, while only 2 were adult birds.  All of the recaptured birds had been originally banded earlier this year.  This presents some interesting questions.  Is this a fluke year for Pacific Wrens?  This year has been a huge breeding year for Pacific Wrens at Morse, but the birds we’ve caught were all banded this year, not in previous years.  Are any of the hatch year birds born at Morse this year going to return next year?  Or, seemingly like Pacific Wrens banded in the past, will they choose a new habitat to raise young in?  It will be very interesting to see next year if this same pattern continues, of many juvenile Pacific Wrens present with no past year recaptured adults, or if we’ll see recaptured birds next year.

Out of the 26 birds we banded today, 10 were recaptures; out of the 10 recaptures, one of the birds had been originally banded in a previous year.  This lone bird was a female Swainson’s Thrush.  Originally banded on August 1^st, 2009 as an after second year female, she has come to Morse all three years with a brood patch present, giving evidence that she is probably returning to Morse every year to breed.  This is a very different pattern than the one the Pacific Wrens are exhibiting.  Instead of only catching hatch year Swainson’s Thrushes, we’ve caught juvenile and adult birds, and many of the adult birds have been recaptures from previous years.

A close up photograph of the field at Morse where the majority of the swallow boxes are.

The Morse Preserve is a gorgeous area of land.  When you drive in, you’re surrounded on either side by tall trees with smaller plant-life growing along the side of the road.  The forest area continues on to the left, while to your right you’ll see an overgrown field.  Throughout all of Morse, but mainly in the field, there are swallow boxes set up to provide possible nest sites for the swallows that come to Morse.  Today, with all of the downtime in-between net runs because of the small number of birds caught, Clarice took out her box-opening gear and went to see if she could find any current nests or juvenile birds that she could possibly band.  Her efforts were mainly for naught though.  Out all of the boxes she checked, of which there were probably around 20, she only found one nest with an egg in it.  A couple of boxes had failed nests in them, a couple had been taken over by wrens, and one box had even succumbed to the efforts of wasps.  Only one box had baby birds in it, and these birds weren’t swallows: they were Black-Capped Chickadees!  Approximately four or five chickadees were in the nest, and Clarice estimated that they were probably around one week old.  Being this young, they were too young to band, as their legs were still too soft to support a band.  Everyone took a look at them before we closed up the box again and left them to enjoy life in peace.  The chickadees basically looked like tiny little puff balls with huge yellow gapes around their mouth.  Even at one week old, though, they did have some distinctive chickadee characteristics, which made it very easy to identify their species.

The arrows are pointing to the five red waxy appendages on this Cedar Waxwing's wing. Look within the circles on the close-up to see the tips better.

One of the 26 birds that we caught today was a Cedar Waxwing.  This Cedar Waxwing had 5 distinct “waxy red appendages,” as Pyle likes to call them.  The number of waxy tips that a Cedar Waxwing has can help a bander determine the age and sex of that bird, along with other information based on plumage, the amount of black under the bird’s throat, etc.

Our day drew to a close with the clouds still overhead with our grand total of 26 birds for the day.  It had definitely been a slow day, but it allowed the banders to explore the rest of the preserve: Clarice and Mark opened all of the swallow boxes, I took photos of some of the plants, and Don tried to identify one species of purple flower based on the color and length of the flower’s hairs.  Even though the day was slow, we all still had a lot of fun spending the day at Morse with all of the surrounding wildlife.

Don trying to identify the flower. The optics on his head are normally used to identify what stage of development a bird's skull is in.

McChord Air Force Base: June 28th, 2011
By Emma White

In attendance: Daniel Froehlich, Don Norman (driver), Emma White.

Rufous Hummingbird 5
Willow Flycatcher 2
Bewick’s Wren 1
Chestnut-backed Chickadee 1
Black-capped Chickadee 1
American Robin 1
Swainson’s Thrush 11
Orange-crowned Warbler 3
Yellow Warbler 6
Common Yellowthroat 3
MacGillivray’s Warbler 1
Song Sparrow 7
Oregon Junco 1
Black-headed Grosbeak 2
Total: 45

Today was a busy day for the three of us at McChord Air Force Base, catching the most number of birds yet this year at this site!

Our morning began as we started to set up the ten nets on site. After we had all returned to where we band the birds, we learned that net 16 hadn’t been able to be set up. The area we band on at McChord is very close to a wetlands. Net number 16 is the net that gets set up so close to the wetland that at certain times of year, it is part of the wetland! Every year in past years PSBO has had to wait a couple weeks for all of the water to dry out where net 16 goes. This year the water hadn’t dried yet by June 28th, which is the latest in the year that PSBO has ever had to wait to set up the net. We had a long, wet spring with a very late summer this year, so that probably contributed to the late presence of the water.

Another interesting thing happened: we caught a Chestnut-backed Chickadee, a Black-capped Chickadee, and an Oregon Junco. While these birds, especially chickadees, are extremely common birds to catch and band at Morse, they are much less common at McChord, which is why it was so surprising that we got one of all three of these species. The Oregon Junco was also a recapture, allowing us to research and find that he had been originally banded on June 8th, 2010. Based on our estimated age for him these past two years, we can guess that he was born in 2009.

A wing of one of the Willow Flycatchers that we caught today.

We also caught two Willow Flycatchers today. Flycatchers are interesting birds to get caught in a net. Either the bander immediately knows which flycathcher species they are holding, or if they’re not sure, they have to take many measurements to try to determine the species. These measurements include wing length, tail length, one feather’s length subtracted from a different feather’s length, bill length, and more. All of these measurements can then be taken to a chart that Pyle has in his book where he shows the different flycatchers and what their measurements should be for all of these different things. Sometimes, taking all of these measurements is the only way to be sure of what type of flycatcher you’re holding in your hand.

Another place where many of our numbers for the day came from were from warblers. We caught three Orange-crowned Warblers, six Yellow Warblers, three Common Yellowthroats, and one MacGillivray’s Warbler, giving us a grand total of thirteen warblers in one day, almost a third of our total bird count! For the Yellow Warblers, we caught three SY birds, and three ASY birds. All of these birds showed signs of breeding, the females having brood patches and the males exhibiting cloacal protrusions. Hopefully the sign of all these breeding Yellow Warblers at McChord means just that, that they’re

One of the male Yellow Warblers we caught today.

breeding at McChord! Unlike the Yellow Warblers, one of the three Common Yellowthroats that we caught was actually a juvenile, HY bird. It’s always nice to see direct evidence of breeding at McChord, such as the presence of this juvenile!

A couple of our recaptures were also really exciting catches. Two of the male Swainson’s Thrushes that we caught were originally banded in June 2008. Our age estimates for them put their births in 2007 and 2006. They’ve both come back every year (excluding one) since they were originally banded. This is really fantastic news, because it is solid evidence that these Swainson’s Thrushes believe that McChord is good habitat to live and breed in.

Another exciting recapture was that of a Song Sparrow. Originally banded on June 7, 2005, this male bird has returned every year, without fail, to McChord. Estimated to be at least seven years old, this is a really incredible bird to have in our records. Every time we’ve caught and processed this bird, he has had a cloacal protrusion. This is a great indication that this Song Sparrow believes that McChord is a good habitat to live and breed in, and has felt this way for the past six years!

Overall, we had a really good day today. We had a nice bird turn out, with weather that wasn’t too hot or too cold. I can’t wait to explore McChord more in the future!

Okay, how about some bird pictures?

This Ruby-crowned Kinglet is one of the few adult birds we're catching this year. It looks so ratty because it is in mid-molt.

Adult Yellow Warbler with a mosquito as a small snack after banding. The growing flight feathers shown in the picture represent rapid molt. All six secondaries were either in sheath or pin, indicating a great deal of overlap in flight feather growth.

Juvenile male Nashville Warbler. This one was caught at McDaniel Lake.

Juvenile female MacGillivray's Warbler. We caught this one at Cash Prairie.

Juvenile Western Wood Pewee, caught at McDaniel Lake.

Adult female Warbling Vireo, banded at McDaniel Lake.

This is one of our adult trainees with one of our "neekers" this year, a Solitary Sandpiper!

Here's one of the many wonderful views from Timberwolf Mountain. We went up with the teens on Thursday and admired the views and enjoyed the last bit of unmelted snow.

The last couple days with the teen camp were a lot of fun! Yesterday, we took a trip up to Timberwolf Mountain (elevation 6400 feet) and admired the fantastic views up there. It was a bit cloudy, but we could clearly see Eastern Washington, a bit of Mt. Rainier behind the clouds, and Mt. Adams quite clearly. There was even a chunk of snow that was still present in a shady location! The teens had lots of fun with some brief snowball fights before we returned for dinner and banding the following day. Today, we visited one of our new sites, “Road End Willows” and sadly didn’t have much luck with birds. There were plenty of sparrows, juncos, warblers, vireos, and flycatchers around, but not many found our nets. We said goodbye to the teens later this afternoon, and now we’re launching right into Family Weekend! Everybody is excited to see some bird banding, and the kids are already having a great time.

More pictures will be sure to come, and we’ll keep you posted with the birds we band over the weekend and next week as we wrap up Banding Blitz next week.

- by Joey Smokey