07-24-15 Bird Field Note

07-24-15 Bird Field Note

July 25, 2015

Kate Stone's bird field note details Common Poorwill nest progression monitoring, the end of Lewis's Woodpecker trapping for the year, and songbird banding with the UM Bird Ecology Lab.

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Bird Field Note Kate Stone

We tracked the progression of two Common Poorwill nests. On 7/7, Mat found the adult female from one nest dead on the ground, within inches of the young. She had a visible wound on the left side of her face. A necropsy confirmed blunt force trauma to the side of her head, but no other sign of injury.

The male brooded the young for several days after the mortality. Last week we lost his signal and could no longer find the young.. We last saw them on 7/10, on the edge of a rocky game trail. Based on their hatch date of 6/27 or 6/28, we know they were not independent. We suspect they were abandoned and/or predated.

We continue to track one Common Poorwill nest near the Rock Quarry. We’ve documented almost the entire progression of this nest. Adults consistently brood the young. In most cases, the female broods during the day.

On 7/15, our woodpecker trapping season ended with the capture of this adult. We deployed our tenth and last PinPoint GPS unit. 11

Several of our woodpeckers were molting primaries (below) or had a mixture of feather ages in their primary coverts. Molt patterns will help us age the birds.

On 7/15, our woodpecker trapping season ended with the capture of this adult. We deployed our tenth and last PinPoint GPS unit.

We captured 37 birds of 12 species on our fourth day of summer banding. Nearly half of our captures (18) this period were hatch-year birds, including 12 hatch-year House Wrens.

Juvenile House Wrens look similar to adults, with the exception of their undertail coverts. The brown, sparsely barbed feathers pictured below contrast with the denser, cream and brown, barred undertail coverts of adult House Wrens.