UMBEL Banding Field Note

UMBEL Banding Field Note

July 28, 2016

The UM Bird Ecology Lab provides an update on their songbird banding and research efforts.

We captured 44 birds of 14 species on our third day of banding.

This young Downy Woodpecker is the first bird we captured this summer that was born in 2016.

This is already the fifth Western Wood-Pewee captured in 2016. Across previous years, we captured an average of 4.6 Wood-Pewees on the Northern Floodplain.

A rainy morning on July 6th interrupted our fourth day of banding. We closed our nets after only two hours. Rain is problematic while banding for a couple of reasons. First, wet nets are unsafe for birds.

We caught this male Cooper’s Hawk on July 6th. We determined that this bird was born last summer. The bird had multiple traits intermediate between a juvenile bird and an adult.

Cooper’s Hawk is replacing some of its flight feathers.

The Cooper’s Hawk’s eyes are transitioning from the yellow of a juvenile to the deep red of an adult. Note the red specks radiating out from the bird’s pupil.

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