Fall 2019 Banding Season, Final Week: November 11—November 15

Unfortunately, on Tuesday we had to close early as rain approached, but we did band a late Eastern Phoebe. The brief warm weather and humidity in the morning caused the Spring Peepers to call briefly, making it sound and feel like early spring. There was even a bright red Wood Frog who hopped along the net lanes. The temperature dropped quickly as the cold front and rain approached, from 55 degrees in the afternoon all the way down to 20 degrees overnight. Wednesday was windy and cold, a coating of snow remained on curled leaves in the shade, with temperatures barely warming up into the lower 30s. Thursday was exceedingly cold, with very little sun to warm us up between net runs and taking down the nets. Friday was more seasonable, we even spotted a Spring Peeper as we sadly took down the last of the nets. There was an impressive flight of loons almost all week as well, over 1,000 Red-throated Loons and hundreds of Common Loons were streaming by, with an occasional Razorbill or scoter flock. On Scokes pond a small group of Bufflehead have staked their claim on a portion of the pond along with a few Hooded Mergansers. On Friday, a male Green-winged Teal was sleeping concealed in the vegetation of the pond, head tucked and facing the sun.

Overall this season, we banded lower numbers of White-throated Sparrows, Myrtle and Blackpoll Warblers and kinglets, all breeders of the boreal forest. Unfortunately it seems that other banding stations in the Northeast have reported the same preliminary trends. Since a high proportion of Manomet’s fall captures are hatch-year birds, this may be connected to a poor breeding season for several of these species. However, we did catch an average number of Gray Catbirds, which breed locally. When looking at a more precise metric, Birds per Net Hour (BPNH) not only did we have a low number of new birds banded, we had one of the lowest BPNH in almost 54 years. The poor breeding season could be attributed to excess precipitation and a colder than average spring.

With long term banding such as Manomet’s, age of recapture data can be some of the most interesting to look at. With resident birds that we’ve banded, we can determine their minimum age based on when they were first banded. Most excitingly we had several Gray Catbirds that were five years old and one that was seven years old! We also recaptured two White-throated Sparrows that were banded in fall 2018, perhaps returning to winter nearby. A Song Sparrow and a Carolina Wren that were both four years old were caught as well. Mysteries of aging birds like this can only be revealed through the art of bird banding and long term migration monitoring!

For now, the nets are hung in the banding lab. We’ll eagerly await the stirring of amphibians and reptiles in the spring and songs of the first migrants filling the forest. But until then, we’ll enjoy the sea ducks off the bluff, dabbling ducks in the bogs, and the wintering sparrows softly “chinking” from the brush piles and leaf litter on the property.

Until the spring!
Megan, Sarah, Evan and Nick

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