Lincoln Land Community College
Thursday October 13, 10:40 AM to 12:05 PM
Temperature: 55-ish degrees Fahrenheit
Weather: Sunny, light winds out of east
If you would like to know who is responsible for my current obsession with birds, I can give you two names. One of them is the LLCC Bird Banding President, Vern Kleen, and the other is the professor who helped to bring the aforementioned man to Lincoln Land Community College in the first place, and who is the same professor for which I am writing all these journals, Tony Rothering. Thanks to them, a couple of Northern Harriers, and a few hundred ducks in early February, I am now hooked.
It's days like the one I am going to describe that keep me hooked, too. I went out of a class Thursday morning, and decided to venture over to the banding station and have a look around. When I got over, Vern Kleen and the assistants, who are all volunteers, were joyous. I looked at the board (above) and became quite joyous myself! All those four-letter words on the side are codes for bird common names. For most birds, you take the first two letters of the first name and the first two letters of the last name. Tennessee Warbler, for instance, becomes TEWA and Song Sparrow becomes SOSP. It varies according to the bird's common name, but for the most part, these four- letter codes are understandable, if you know the bird's common name. Either way, seeing 23 code names on the board is a sign of a great day, as that means 23 bird species have been caught and banded. That's a LOT for this bird banding station, so I stuck around and watched the next round be brought in.
While the first two main surprises of the day were already caught before I got out there (a first-ever-for-the-station- Grasshopper Sparrow and a first-of-the-season Slate-colored Junco) the next main surprise was a Blue-headed Vireo (Vireo solitarius), a bird which by all accounts should have migrated already. This was also only the second one ever banded at the station. Like all Vireos, even when handled carefully it was a bit nippy.
A Vireo, for the unaware, is one of a group of birds that lives high in trees, rarely sits still, and hunt insects. Most of them are only slightly colorful, and often several species will all resemble one another. This Blue-headed Vireo is probably the best of them all, being distinctive (at least in this part of the world, not so much out west), fairly colorful, and recognizable with its distinctive blue-grey head and white "glasses".
Another good bird was this Swamp Sparrow (Melospiza georgiana), one of three I saw banded. It should be noted for some people that there is minimal harm done to these birds, as it's a swift process of catch, band, and release, and the occasional photo in between, taken as quickly as possible.
It works like this. The bird banders set up nets around a large section of prairie/woodland on campus. These nets, mist nets, are hard for the birds to see, especially windless days. The bird banders, who are trained in removing the birds from the nets (I am not) do so and put them in small cloth bags which allow the bird to move freely but not injure itself. These are then carried back to the spot where the bands are, where the aluminum bands are put on the left leg of the bird. These bands come in dozen of sizes and they are loose enough and small enough that they don't bother the bird. After this, one or two photos may be taken. The bird is then released back into the wild. If a banded bird is caught, the banders will record the number in order to figure out where it came from.
It's getting a bit late in the season for most warblers, but this Western Palm Warbler (Setophaga palmarum palmarum) (one of six I saw) was one of a number of warblers we saw. Warblers, for the unaware, are small, colorful, often hard-to-see birds, and there's one heck of a lot of them. Furthermore, they often look similar, and they change plumages between spring and fall, usually becoming much drabber in the fall. Other warblers seen and/or caught included:
Tennessee Warbler (Oreothlypis peregrina)
Two Orange-crowned Warblers (Oreothlypis celata), a Common Yellowthroat and not in the nets, but just above them out of reach...
A Pine Warbler (Setophaga pinus), which I had only seen once before in my life.
Add to this about 15 Yellow-rumped Warblers, and you have the total number of warblers. However, there were dozens more birds than just these. A Great Blue Heron, around ten Turkey Vultures, two Mourning Doves, about fifteen Chimney Swifts, twenty-five odd European Starlings, two Red-bellied Woodpeckers, one Downy Woodpecker, four Northern Flickers, three Blue Jays, eight American Crows, a White-breasted Nuthatch. and one Eastern Bluebird were all seen flying outside of the nets.
Here's a short list of the birds I saw caught in the nets on that day: a Tufted Titmouse, a Black-capped Chickadee, one House Wren, two Northern Flickers, two American Robins, three Chipping Sparrows, three Swamp Sparrows, and one White-crowned Sparrow (Zonotrichia leucophrys) pictured. Overall, there were a LOT of birds, as per usual.
In the time since this was first worked on, two banding days with over one hundred and fifty birds have happened. The first of these had over two hundred and forty birds captured, a station record! The majority of these birds have been sparrows, like the one below. The records of what I have personally seen are below. Feel free to drop by the bird banding station any time on a Monday-Saturday morning from now until mid-November. The best days to stop by are cloudy, windless days after cold fronts, as the birds, pushed south by the cold fronts, have a harder time seeing the nets on cloudy and windless days. As the station is open to the public (with some rules for conduct), please, if you're interested, consider a visit. Like me, you might pick up a new hobby!
Ebird Checklists
http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S32020784
More Recent Ebird Checklists (to show recent bird counts)
http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S32115820
http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S32115981
http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S32115994
http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S32130568
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