A skeleton VCE crew of 3 returned to the Mansfield ridgeline on
Friday evening for our final 2012 session of mist netting and
banding. We usually time our mid-September visit for the 10-15th,
when Bicknell's Thrushes undergo a resurgence of vocal activity. We
hardly expected to match last fall's 9/12-13
outing, when we captured 20 Bicknell's Thrushes, and we in
fact wondered whether any thrushes would still be present 10
calendar days later this fall.
We set up 16 nets on a clear, cool, breezy evening. The ridgeline
was eerily quiet, with just a few Yellow-rumped Warbler calling
intermittently and 1 or 2 White-throated Sparrows singing briefly.
However, at ~7 pm, we heard the first Bicknell's Thrush call, and
over the next 15 minutes several additional birds chimed in. By the
time darkness settled at 7:30, we had heard at least 9 thrushes
call, and we captured one bird, a female that we had banded in
breeding condition on June 14 and recaptured on 6/28 and 7/2 -- all
in the exact same net site.
Yesterday morning featured chilly temps, clouds that had snaked
upslope from the valleys below (a rare phenomenon on Mansfield in
our experience), and a continued stiff breeze from the west. The
dawn Bicknell's Thrush chorus outshone the previous dusk's, and we
heard at least 14 birds calling, with a couple of songs thrown in.
Before taking our nets down at noon, we captured another 3 thrushes,
all of them adult males that we had banded in June or July. In
contrast to last September, we didn't capture any immature
(young-of-the year) birds, nor did we capture or observe any
Swainson's Thrushes.
Avian activity was otherwise slow to warm up, but by 8:30-9 am
migrants (mostly Yellow-rumped Warblers) were moving conspicuously
around the ridgeline. There was no hint of a real fall-out, and we
had few observations of bona fide transient species (i.e., non local
breeders), but we ended up with 42 captures.
Banding totals:
Golden-crowned Kinglet 1
Ruby-crowned Kinglet 5
Bicknell's Thrush 4 (all recaptures)
Blackpoll Warbler 6 (1 recapture of an adult male banded on July
2)
Yellow-rumped Warbler 16
Black-throated Blue Warbler 1
White-throated Sparrow 3
Dark-eyed Junco 7
Other birds of note were a singing Winter Wren, a single Blue Jay
(unusual on the ridgeline), and a single Pine Siskin. It was
interesting to confirm that so many of the resident breeding
Bicknell's Thrushes remain on site so long into September. They'll
definitely be on their way soon.
Chris
--
Chris Rimmer
Vermont Center for Ecostudies
P.O. Box 420
Norwich, VT 05055
802-649-1431 ext. 1
http://www.vtecostudies.org