05-14-15 Bird Field Note

05-14-15 Bird Field Note

May 14, 2015

Kate Stone's bird field note provides updates on avian science projects investigating Lewis's Woodpeckers, Common Poorwills, Long-billed Curlews, and Raptor migration counts and satellite telemetry.

Download (2.75 MB)

Bird Field Note: Kate Stone 05/14/15

We continue to monitor for color-marked Lewis’s Woodpeckers. So far we have re-sighted seven of the 12 birds marked last year.

Though some woodpeckers exhibit territorial behavior, we think birds are still returning and choosing nest sites. Several males are guarding previously used nest trees. We’ve seen some individuals, like this female, going in and out of cavities.

Egbert, the male Osprey from the Northern Center Pivot nest, bumped a woodpecker foraging in the top of a cottonwood.

4 A Bald Eagle bumped a different woodpecker from the nest tree he’s been guarding for over a week. This tree has been used by Lewis’s Woodpeckers every year since 2010.

Sarah Norton from the Intermountain Bird Observatory found five Long-Billed Curlew territories and one nest over the past two weeks.

On May 7th, Sarah examined the eggs and estimated that the nest was complete 11 days ago.

We counted 124 migrating raptors this week. Accipiters made up the bulk of this week’s flight, followed by Red-tailed Hawks and Ospreys. As we near the end of the season, we expect daily totals to decrease.

We took this photo just after Rapunzel displaced another adult female from the nest. Though we have received several photos of Rapunzel in Texas during the past two years, this was our first time seeing her with our own eyes since banding her in the summer of 2012. We were thrilled to see her transmitter fitting so well!