A final tally!
Three weeks have now passed since the nets were taken down and stored away at Cabot Head. Winter is in the process of slowly arriving. I have been busy with data analysis and report writing. As (more or less) promised, …
Three weeks have now passed since the nets were taken down and stored away at Cabot Head. Winter is in the process of slowly arriving. I have been busy with data analysis and report writing. As (more or less) promised, …
The fall migration monitoring of 2016 has now officially ended, with the last day being on October 31. It is always a bittersweet moment to furl the nets for the last time and store them away for the winter. It …
We tend to see “food chains” as a simple succession, from herbivores eating plants, to carnivores eating herbivores but in reality, nature rarely fits neatly into little boxes. The notion of chains is more accurately replaced by “food webs” and …
The leaves are now displaying a rich array of gold, red, orange, yellow, and even some lingering green here and there, bringing a pure brilliance to the forest that surrounds us. The days are markedly shorter, with a lazy sun …
The windfall continued throughout the week, with busy day following busy day, reaping a rich collection of kinglets, juncos and sparrows. From October 3 to 8, a total of 499 birds were banded, quite a good number in a 6-day …
For most of last week, we had an East wind blowing at Cabot Head, sometimes strong, sometimes weak, but quite persistent. East winds tend to bring rain in their wake. However, this time, the rain was mostly to the South …
The tilted Earth spinning endlessly around the Sun is now bringing us, in the Northern Hemisphere, the time of shorter days and cooler temperatures. There is a gradual change of (feathered) guard accompanying the slow change of seasons. At Cabot …
Bird migration is one of the most fascinating phenomena of the natural world. Of course, I may be a little biased in my judgement. However, it is hard to argue that migrating birds are spectacular, weaving invisible threads all over …
Here’s a young female Belted Kingfisher! In the last 14 years, we have banded only 11 of them, always in the fall. On September 4, we caught a young Black-billed Cuckoo. It is only the fourth fall season when …
It has now been three weeks since fall migration monitoring at the Cabot Head Research Station began, but it still feels like summer, both in terms of temperatures and birdlife. Suffice it to say, evidence of migration has been sparse …