Surprisingly, more birds came in last night, even without a big change in the weather. Feisty worm-eating warblers were the top capture of the morning. We catch the majority of wormies in September, and they are almost completely gone by October except for the occasional wintering individual.
We caught another bird today that was re-growing feathers from a close encounter with something. This Blue-gray gnatcatcher is missing primary flight feathers on one wing, and the replacements are growing back and will probably be full-length in about a week. One of the remaining flight feathers is broken at the top. This is a good opportunity to point out the difference between hatching-year and adult feathers. The first batch of feathers a fledgling bird grows are weaker and often colored differently than the feathers an older bird has. The yellow lines point to incoming adult feathers on this hatching-year gnatcatcher: the four replacements for those that were lost and two more close to the body (the tertials). These last feathers were being replaced naturally in the same position on both wings. They are darker gray and less worn than the surrounding juvenile feathers. These molt limits are one of the main ways we can tell the age of the birds.
| SPECIES | NEW | RETURN | RECAP |
| Red-eyed vireo | 1 | – | – |
| Blue-gray gnatcatcher | 4 | – | – |
| Northern parula | 1 | – | – |
| Prairie warbler | 1 | – | – |
| Black-and-white warbler | 2 | – | – |
| Worm-eating warbler | 7 | – | – |
| Ovenbird | 4 | – | 1 |
| Northern waterthrush | 1 | – | – |
| # BIRDS CAPTURED | # SPECIES | # NETS | NET HOURS | CAPTURE RATE (BIRDS/100NH) | |
| DAILY TOTAL | 21 | 8 | 23 | 151.5 | 17.16 |
| SEASON TOTAL | 243 | 18 | 23 | 2319.75 | 11.98 |