Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Banding at Palo

Instead of owling, I helped out with banding at Palomarin field station, where I live and where the PRBO offices are. We open nets 15min after sunrise and close 6 hours later. It was a beautiful, warm, calm day and so were able to stay open for the whole time. We only caught 9 birds of 6 species, but it was nice to be banding again. I miss the WIWAs and the PUFIs (who tried to bite me) and being more keyed into the small birds rather than trying to ignore them while concentrating on finding owls.

My most interesting capture was a young Song Sparrow. While taking him out of the net, I immediately knew he was a baby due to the slightly reddish lores, and the fluffy quality to his body feathers (meaning it was his juvenal plumage, of poorer quality compared to adult feathers). And when I took him back to the lab to take measurements, his skull (which I could see through the translucent skin) was barely ossified, signifying a bird hatched this season.