Poised for Flight

This week's highlights include an adult male Calliope hummingbird, an adult male Western Tanager, a fledgling Western-scrub Jay, and a Male Downy Woodpecker all captured in the nets. Other interesting birds were a flyover flock of yellow-headed blackbirds, townsend solitaires and 2 groups of mountain quail with babies.

This week we set out of Arcata to band at some of the sites on the Trinity and the Klamath rivers. We had an interesting week and we are seeing more and more fledgling birds captured in the nets. The rivers flow through the mountains of northern California and several national parks including Six Rivers National Forest, and Trinity/Shasta national forests before they converge and flow into the Pacific Ocean north of Humboldt bay. The sites that we band at on the rivers usually consist of willow patches on the rivers edge. Alder is also abundant. The willows provide nesting area, and food resources to many species of migratory songbirds. The position of the nets is important and usually located between willow thickets and near flowing water. A poorly placed net will have very low capture rates or may fail to capture any birds at all. Some of the busier nets will catch birds consistently throughout the day. After we open the nets just after sunrise, we check the nets every half hour. We will decrease this to 20 minutes if the capture rates are high, or the temperature is too cold. If the capture rates are slow we may increase the time, but never more than 40 minutes as the longer the birds are in the net the more severely they can become entangled. The risk of predation also increases when birds are in the nets. When we take a bird back to the station, under ideal conditions we can process a bird in about a minute. This includes checking for breeding characteristics, fat stores, wing and tail wear, body or flight feather molt, and determining the age and sex of the bird. We also swab birds quickly to contribute samples to an avian influenza study that is being conducted. After that we weigh the birds and release them. This continues for 5 hours every day until we close the nets and take them down and drive to the next site.

birds banded:

Red Cap Creek (13 birds banded)
Yellow-breasted chat 3 (1 fledgling)
Yellow warbler 1
Spotted Towhee 3 (1 fledgling)
Macgillivray's warbler 3
Orange-crowned warbler 3

Hamilton Ponds (13 birds banded)
Yellow warbler 3
Bewick's wren 2
Yellow-breasted chat 2
Spotted towhee 5

Indian Valley (44 birds banded)
GOLDEN-CROWNED KINGLET 2 (both fledglings)
Hermit warbler 2
Macgillivray's warbler 2
Warbling vireo 1
Orange-crowned warbler 3
Mountain chickadee 2
Pine siskin 5 (4 fledglings)
Oregon Junco 5 (1 fledgling)
Chipping sparrow 1
Purple finch 1
WESTERN TANAGER 1 (beautiful after second year male)
Red-breasted sapsucker 3
Thick-billed fox Sparrow 3
Black-headed grosbeak 1
Spotted towhee 3 (s fledglings)
Yellow warbler 1
Wrentit 2 (including the same individual captured 4 times)
CALLIOPE HUMMINGBIRD 1 (the smallest bird in North America!!)
Rufous Hummingbird 1
Allen's Hummingbird 1
Dusky flycatcher 3 (1 fledgling)

Hocker Flat (19 birds banded)
WESTERN SCRUB-JAY 1 (fledgling)
BLACK-THROATED GREY WARBLER 1
Macgillivray's warbler 3 (1 fledgling)
Song sparrow 5 (3 fledglings)
DOWNY WOODPECKER 1
Wrentit 2 (1 fledgling)
Yellow-breasted chat 4 (2 fledglings)
Anna's Hummingbird 1
Bewick's wren 1

And now some pictures:

A fledgling Western-scrub Jay at Hocker Flat