• Saturday-Sunday, May 31-June 1, 2003: Cool and overcast conditions with intermittent light to moderate showers on Saturday required us to strongly limit our banding effort, and strong winds on Sunday all but prevented banding.  Consequently, our spring banding season (in terms of effort) kind of "went out like a lamb," and our hopes for just one more species for this spring's banding list were dashed.  So, there will be no spring banding this year of Great Crested Flycatcher, Yellow-throated Vireo, Yellow-billed Cuckoo, or Golden-winged Warbler, species (with the exception of YTVI) that we have banded one or more of on average each spring. 
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• Fully half of our spring banding total of six Scarlet Tanagers was banded on the second to last day of the season--one male (an SY bird; top photo below) and two females, an SY and an ASY, the latter (bottom photo below) apparently mated to the SY male.  Both were caught in the same net at the same time, and both were in breeding condition.

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• At least through Saturday we were still catching unequivocal spring migrants, like a Magnolia Warbler, a Mourning Warbler, and an American Redstart, all with large fat deposits, and the ASY female Blackpoll Warbler pictured below.  Compared to the SY female BLPW banded and pictured earlier in the week (for comparison, the second photo below is another image of that same SY bird), the ASY BLPW female had much heavier streaking on its head, throat, and sides, as well as broader, whiter wing bars.

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• The very last bird banded for the spring 2003 was a Northern Cardinal that looked as though it might have fledged directly from its nest into our nets!   If we questioned whether or not today should bring the Powdermill's spring migration banding season to an official close, this barely flighted NOCA erased those doubts!

Look for a full summary of our spring 2003 banding results on this website shortly.

• Tuesday-Friday, May 27-30, 2003: Cool, overcast, foggy and/or drizzly in the early mornings, becoming partly sunny and mild by late morning or early afternoon every day but Wednesday (when it remained unseasonably cool and overcast all day).  Brian Jones, Annie Lindsay, Jim Gruber, Joe Schreiber, and Randi Gerrish helped with the banding.

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• Overall, with 880 net hours of effort, we banded 103 birds of 35 species during the first four days of the final banding week of the spring season.  The first banding day this week (Tuesday, May 27) was by far the best day in terms of banding total (54), species diversity (20), and capture rate (13.5 birds/100 net hours).  No new species have been added to the spring 2003 banding list so far this week, and there are only a very few prospects in the last couple days of the season (maybe Warbling and/or Yellow-throated Vireo?  Yellow-billed Cuckoo and/or Great Crested Flycatcher? Cerulean and/or Golden-winged Warbler?).

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• Not unexpectedly, birds banded recently have been a mixture of local nesting birds and later migrants.  In the first category, we banded our first fledgling Mourning Dove (first photo below) and American Robin (second photo below).

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• In the second category, we continue to catch late migrant warblers like Blackpoll (SY female pictured in top photo below) and Mourning (SY female in middle photo below), and Empidonax flycatchers, including our 24th Yellow-bellied Flycatcher of the season (bottom photo below).

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• Like the SY male Baltimore Oriole banded and pictured here last week, an SY male Rose-breasted Grosbeak banded today had had unsually unextensive prebasic and prealternate molts, making it among the dullest colored RBGR males we have ever seen at this season.

Waterbirds to Woodpeckers

Flycatchers to Swallows

Chickadee to Waxwing

Wood Warblers

Tanagers to Finches