Stéphane’s Blog for May 12, 2011

A Busy Day!

It was a good day this morning, with 88 birds of 22 species banded! We got our first Mourning Warbler, Least Flycatcher (2 individuals), and Wood Thrush! With the nets busy, there wasn’t a lot of time for observations, as the crew is quite small these days. However, it seemed that birds were mostly feeding in the vegetation, rather than flying around, as they did yesterday. 12 species of warblers were detected today, but we are still missing Common Yellowthroat! Hard to believe!

There was a female Eastern Towhee among many White-throated and some White-crowned Sparrows. “Our” Summer Tanager is still around.

Yesterday afternoon, we finally got our first Ruby-throated Hummingbird. It probably waited for the last, tiny patch of snow to melt: the huge snow bank at net C13 finally completely disappeared yesterday afternoon. Seeing its size in mid-April, I bet May 10th as its last day. I wasn’t off much! It is more than a week later than another late spring, 2009, when the snow bank there lasted up to May 2 …

Stéphane