We all converged at Cape Florida early this morning and were greeted by steady rain, so we waited until it tapered off around 0745 to open the nets. Birds seemed to be flying around everywhere so we got pretty excited for a 100+ bird day of banding, but it was not to be. After a little over two hours we had to close again but we did catch 35 birds in the meantime. We tried to open again around 1130 during a break but more rain moved in so we called it a day with 49 new bandings. It could have been close to a hundred birds if we had been uninterrupted! Interestingly, a lot of the birds captured today were lean, so it is possible they were individuals that came in yesterday but are not ready to continue their flight. Yesterday’s Swainson’s thrushes were nowhere to be seen, so these strong fliers pushed on through last night’s waves of rain to continue their migration.
We banded this weird hair Black-throated blue today. The feathers look to be deformed and are growing longer than usual, rather than normal feathers messed up by rain or handling. We also caught our record-breaking 163rd Worm-eating warbler!
| SPECIES | NEW | RETURN | RECAP |
| White-eyed vireo | 1 | – | – |
| Northern parula | 4 | – | – |
| Prairie warbler | 2 | – | – |
| American redstart | 10 | – | – |
| Black-throated blue warbler | 14 | – | – |
| Black & white warbler | 1 | – | 1 |
| Northern waterthrush | 1 | – | – |
| Ovenbird | 11 | – | – |
| Swainson’s warbler | 1 | – | – |
| Worn-eating warbler | 1 | – | – |
| Common yellowthroat | 3 | – | – |
| Painted bunting | – | – | 1 |
| # BIRDS CAPTURED | # SPECIES | # NETS | NET HOURS | CAPTURE RATE (BIRDS/100NH) | |
| DAILY TOTAL | 49 | 11 | 23 | 80.5 | 63.35 |
| SEASON TOTAL | 1140 | 36 | 23 | 5808.05 | 21.87 |