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The Landbird Conservation Team

Welcome to the first weekly summary of the Spring 2020 season. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, our banding season is going to operate a bit differently this year. Following the North American Banding Council guidelines created in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, our three full-time banding staff (Trevor Lloyd-Evans, Evan Dalton, Alan Kneidel) will conduct a complete walking census of the netting area, the Holmes Farm, and a watch of seabirds recorded from our coast.  This will continue during the migration unless the virus conditions and Commonwealth mandates suddenly improve—an unlikely scenario before the end of the spring migration.

As usual, each week we will bring you a weekly summary, where we highlight what we’ve seen and banded on the property the previous week.

We hope you enjoy! With each summary, we will include links to the eBird checklists that we are using to record the data.

 

 

Alan: Tuesday, April 14—Census

The week started out with an intense coastal storm on Monday, with wind gusts topping out well over 60 miles per hour. The heavy rains that accompanied the storm helped fill Manomet’s bogs to near capacity. Under calm winds and sunny skies, I pulled into Manomet early Tuesday morning, greeted by the first American Toad calls of the season.

The sunny side of Stage Point was quite busy, including a few migrants. Two Pine Warblers were singing from the hardwoods, and a third female Pine Warbler silently gleaned flies from a moss-festooned cherry tree. Even though Manomet has just a handful of pine trees, we typically get this push of Pine Warblers in mid-April as they move northward.