The end of banding season is always bittersweet. We say goodbye to each other and to the birds until the next time we open, but we also get to say goodbye to the early wake-up calls. This is also gives us an opportunity to look back over the season and see what we learned this year – and how it compares to previous fall seasons. So here’s our fall 2024 retrospective, and an invitation to help our station continue in 2025 by donating during Give Miami Day!
This fall, we encountered 931 birds. If you’ve followed this blog for a while, you might be thinking to yourself “wow – that’s very low. Where did they all go?” Remember, though, we were not open 7 days a week this season as we typically do – and we also had to contend with an especially active hurricane season. Even with no direct hits, out of an abundance of caution, we were closed several times due to high winds associated with storms passing nearby.
So let’s instead compare apples to apples, by looking at the relative pay off for our efforts. In banding terms, I’m talking about capture rate, measured in birds per 100 net hours (birds/100NH). This is a measure of how many birds are captured per 100 hours of our nets being open. In the fall of 2022, although we captured 2,365 birds of 56 species, our capture rate was 23.21 birds/100NH. Our average this season was actually quite a bit higher at 34.98 birds/100NH – an impressive feat considering we were down two nets and opened so few days. This indicates we likely got very lucky and managed to pick up several big movement days to make up for the slower days we weren’t open.
This could also be a side effect of those storms. It’s possible that birds that may have traveled along the Gulf Coast instead opted for the calmer winds and less impacted habitat of Atlantic coast. These are the kind of questions that more contemporary tracking technologies, like radio telemetry and the Motus network, help answer in real-time. Bird banding data, on the other hand, is a game of time and volume. We help look at trends over longer time scales, but it requires the dedication of researchers to analyze our 20-year data set.
Coincidentally, that’s exactly what Jennifer Quintero, a former Cape Florida Banding Station volunteer, did! Jennifer chose to analyze our data for her master’s thesis, which she successfully defended on November 8th. Her research yielded several key findings, including confirming that Cape Florida is functioning effectively as a stopover site, with the majority of recaptured birds putting on fat and muscle while using the habitat. Unfortunately, she also found that bird abundance at the station (based on birds per 100 net hours) has declined by about 60% between 2003 and 2023, with an average annual decline of 2.89%. She also looked at species-specific data, including our most frequently encountered species, to examine how their populations might be differentially impacted. She will be writing up her findings for publication, but in the meantime, we are excited to have this in-depth analysis of our data!
These insights can help us better focus our research in future seasons, and collaborate with conservation groups to slow, halt, or even reverse these concerning declines. However, the only way we can continue to contribute to our understanding of migration is by staying open. Our crew is made up primarily of volunteers which generally keeps our costs down, but we still have to replace equipment regularly as our mist nets break down in the hot and humid conditions. That’s why we’re asking you to consider making a contribution to our station this Give Miami Day, November 21st. This year, we’ve set a goal of $10,000. Funds raised during Early Giving (November 17–20) and on Give Miami Day (November 21) will go directly toward bird research for conservation, field supplies, compensating our banders, and providing bird education in South Florida. You can help by donating yourself (all donations are tax-deductible), and/or sharing our donation page with your networks! There are lots of bonus opportunities available on November 21st, so we hope you’ll join us in helping to spread the word even more that day.
On behalf of the volunteers and the birds, we thank you for supporting us through another season. We’ll see you in 2025!
| SPECIES | NEW | RETURN | RECAPTURE | 10/27 – 11/4 TOTAL | SEASON TOTAL |
| Chuck-will’s widow | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Eastern wood-pewee | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Acadian flycatcher | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
| Traill’s flycatcher | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 |
| Eastern phoebe | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Great crested flycatcher | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Yellow-throated vireo | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 4 |
| Red-eyed vireo | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 7 |
| White-eyed vireo | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 6 |
| Veery | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 5 |
| Gray-cheeked thrush | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| Swainson’s thrush | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 15 |
| Wood thrush | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Gray catbird | 18 | 1 | 8 | 27 | 98 |
| Blue-gray gnatcatcher | 4 | 1 | 2 | 7 | 20 |
| Golden-winged warbler | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Tennessee warbler | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Northern parula | 6 | 0 | 1 | 7 | 23 |
| Magnolia warbler | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 8 |
| Cape May warbler | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 12 |
| Black-throated blue warbler | 12 | 0 | 12 | 24 | 133 |
| Myrtle warbler | 3 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 3 |
| Yellow-throated warbler | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| Prairie warbler | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 6 |
| Bay-breasted warbler | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Blackpoll warbler | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Black & white warbler | 3 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 48 |
| American redstart | 8 | 0 | 11 | 19 | 138 |
| Worm-eating warbler | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 57 |
| Swainson’s warbler | 3 | 0 | 3 | 6 | 54 |
| Ovenbird | 9 | 1 | 0 | 10 | 170 |
| Northern waterthrush | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 28 |
| Louisiana waterthrush | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Common yellowthroat | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 48 |
| Hooded warbler | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Yellow-breasted chat | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Northern cardinal | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| Rose-breasted grosbeak | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Indigo bunting | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Painted bunting | 4 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 10 |
| Common grackle | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| TOTAL | 79 | 5 | 40 | 124 | 931 |
| # BIRDS CAPTURED | # SPECIES | # NETS | NET HOURS | CAPTURE RATE (BIRDS/100NH) | |
| Total from 9/2 – 9/7 | 162 | 16 | 21 | 417.84 | 38.77 |
| Total from 9/8 – 9/14 | 94 | 11 | 23 | 332.49 | 28.27 |
| Total from 9/15 – 9/21 | 56 | 15 | 23 | 193.16 | 28.99 |
| Total from 9/22 – 9/28 | 34 | 11 | 23 | 191.66 | 17.74 |
| Total from 9/29 – 10/12 | 234 | 28 | 23 | 371.58 | 62.97 |
| Total from 10/13 – 10/26 | 227 | 25 | 23 | 498.59 | 45.53 |
| Total from 10/27 – 11/4 | 124 | 19 | 23 | 655.99 | 18.9 |
| Season Total | 931 | 41 | 23 | 2661.31 | 34.98 |
Post by Steffanie Munguia, volunteer bander-in-charge. Data compiled by Nicole Rita, Station co-director.