Stéphane’s Posting for Nov. 01, 2011

End of Season!

Yesterday was the last day of banding! This is it: the fall 2011 season has officially ended. We were lucky enough to have good weather in these last few days and be able to open nets for the 6 hours of monitoring. However, numbers of birds around were very low, mostly some Juncos, quite a few American Tree Sparrows (sometimes the most numerous species in the nets), some resident Chickadees and Nuthatches, and very few Kinglets.

There still are a Surf Scoter and a Black Scoter in Wingfield Basin, along with a couple of Horned Grebes. Our resident pair of Bald Eagles show themselves from time to time.

Good-sized flocks of Pine Siskins and White-winged Crossbills are seen regularly, flying over treetops in noisy clutters. On our last day, we got a nice surprise when 2 Crossbills were in our nets! A rare treat to band these interesting looking birds!

It was another great season at Cabot Head! I’ll write a last post soon for a numbered summary of what happened. 🙂

Stéphane