Birds were moving around the outer edges of the circulation of Hurricane Florence who was giving both Carolinas some problems over the weekend. You can see on the radar shot below how the migrants avoided the storm and were moving in big numbers through the Gulf states, down Florida and overwater on both the Atlantic and Gulf sides. The weather down here has been dry and hot so most of these migrants kept going, but some new species did show up such as this beautiful Yellow-throated warbler. Our busy days were only in the 30’s, but if we had had some nighttime showers our banding numbers would have been impressive. Oh well! Safe passage for millions of birds.
Some of our birds are not migrating, including our friendly neighborhood Thick-billed vireo. Birders saw him singing the other day and he sounded pretty good for a juvenile.
The species moving through right now are typical of mid-September, with Worm-eating warblers, Northern waterthrush and Ovenbirds prevalent. Squadrons of Blue-grey gnatcatchers have been all over the Cape, but they do a good job of avoiding the nets. This Ovenbird is about to be released from the weighing tube.
And certain banders got old this week.
Happy birthday, Michelle:)
What size tube are you using for weighing birds? It looks like a piece of pvc pipe. Good luck with migration!
We have 4 sizes of PVC pipe; I don’t know what they are off the top of my head. The birds slide out of them easily when we release them after weighing and the tubes are easy to clean. The fun part is getting little stumps with the different widths without having to buy entire 10 foot sections or whatever length it comes in. The guys at Home Depot had some questions for me when they found me on my belly in the PVC aisle reaching under the shelves for short scraps.