BEKI!!

The past couple days have been pretty slow, rainy days, but I have a few things to talk about! 😉

Day 2 was rainy and a bit windy, we opened the nets a little later (5:30) and had to close around 10:30 as the rain picked up. It was another slow day with 24 birds caught, including 13 Rufous Hummingbirds. We caught a Wilson’s Warbler, a migratory warbler that hopefully we will see more of soon. Just before closing, we also caught a Belted Kingfisher!!! I joked in the early morning after watching a BEKI fly low that the slow day would be totally worth it if we caught one of those…. Didn’t expect it to actually happen. Was a banding tick for me, and just fyi, they smell like dead fish.

Our first Wilson’s Warbler.

I forgot to get a clearer picture, but you can almost see her syndactyl foot!

The amount of rufous in the breast band can help to determine age and sex in Belted Kingfishers.

Belted Kingfishers have syndactyl feet, meaning digits II and III are mostly fused. This foot pattern is common in kingfishers and hornbills (Order Coraciiformes). The fused digits provide a broad, stronger digit that kingfishers use to dig cavities for nesting in the banks of streams.

As for birds seen and heard, we’ve been hearing a ton of Townsend’s Warblers, and keep spotting a pair of unmistakable Sandhill Cranes flying over. They are always really cool to hear, they sound so prehistoric! If you haven’t heard them before, check out some of their sounds on Cornell’s site here.

Day 3 was similar numbers, another slow rainy day with lots of opening/closing nets. We caught six new Orange-crowned Warblers, a Wilson’s Warbler, and managed to catch that Golden-crowned Sparrow from yesterday, so we took a few photos this time 🙂

SY (second year) Golden-crowned Sparrow — check out the black flies to the left 😡

We did briefly open a 12th net by the compost area, where one unbanded Raven likes to hang out, along with a few other birds. He/she saw the net immediately, looked it up and down, seemed to look at us like we were idiots for trying, then flew away. We managed to catch a Steller’s Jay there, but it was a little too windy to keep open for long. We’ll try again in the next couple days.

The rest of our afternoon was spent entering data, enjoying the Field Station’s great food (this blog could easily be an excellent food blog…) and scenery, and hanging out with other researchers visiting the island. It’s cool to hear what everyone else is working on. There’s a great diversity of projects involving archeology, seagrass, starfish, soil, Black bears, and of course the 100 Islands project… I’m hoping to join the starfish crew in the intertidal zone for an afternoon, could be fun!

West Beach. We’ll be doing some more exploring here for sure!

–Sarah