HALIFAX RIVER AUDUBON Bird Banding

Click the links below for detailed banding results and photos
2004 to Current Fall 2007 Final Report Winter 2007-2008 Final Report Winter 2008-2009 Final Report

Species Totals for review or download: Fall 2007 Spring 2008 Fall 2008 Spring 2009 Fall 2009

2010 Spring Banding Schedule:

The start date for full time banding will be Monday, March 15. The start times will be 30 minutes before sunrise but the park gate doesn't open until 8:00. You won't miss much. I need the setup time anyway. This spring until after April 15 I will not be banding on Wednesdays due to my commitment to preparing taxes with AARP. After that I will band as much as I can get in, including working with my banding trainee on Sundays, until it is too hot or I leave for Texas, whichever comes first!

March 15-19: Mon, Tues and Thurs, Fri

March 22-26: Mon, Tues and Thurs, Fri

March 29-30: Mon, Tues
April 1-2: Thurs, Fri.

It is truly exciting at Tomoka State Park so I look forward to all of you coming by to see what we are doing.

Now, to catch up since my last update---

I am so hopelessly behind right now with photos and fall banding reports to you, that I decided the best thing to do is include here the last photos of the fall banding, a little summary of fall highlights, and give you a heads up on the banding schedule for spring. It is going to be a brutal one if the weather cooperates! Specific data of how many birds were caught and which ones are posted on the HRA website if you happen to be data-driven!

The fall turned out to be incredible with a total of 314 new birds banded and 38 recaptures for a total of 352 handled. This is an amazing number because I only banded 284 birds all last year (2008-09). The real story is in the recaptures. My very last bird of the fall was another Myrtle Warbler (MYWA) banded nearly 3 years ago. This is the second MYWA for this fall banded so long ago. Of course you know about the Audubon's Warbler and the Painted Bunting that was recaptured on the very same date as last year in the exact same net. The only difference was about 1 hour in the capture time. This re-enforces how strong site fidelity is for some birds. A brand new bird for the park was captured on Sunday, November 15: Field Sparrow. I have never seen one in the park and I believe it is true that no else has either. This brings the total new species for the fall to 3, with one new sub-species. The total number of species banded this fall was 43. The total number of species over the past 5 1/2 years is 72 species!!! Just imagine all the species around yet to be caught and banded.

What am I finding out? One of the most interesting facts to pop up, thanks to Jason Depue's suggestion to track, is that there are more females than males banded and more juveniles than adults banded of the migrants. It is probably easier and safer to follow the coastline down in the fall.

MYWA were the bird of the fall for the nets but the skies were filled with American Robins (AMRO), Tree Swallows (TRSW), Chimney Swifts (CHSW) and interesting miscellaneous birds such as the Snow Goose that took a nice slow fly-by one morning, the Gray Kingbird (GRKI) never recorded in the park before, 2 adult Eastern Towhees (EATO) and a female Blue Grosbeak (BLGR). Incredibly exciting stuff.

This fall I had more help than ever in the past and the number of visitors to the banding station increased much to my surprise and delight. So, all in all it has been a great fall. I don't know what the spring will bring since we had such uncommonly long cold periods. So much so I could not set up nets at all. Too cold and too much wind. I did periodic bird surveys and think I would not have caught much of anything. So, it was like being on vacation for me! I had more time to enjoy my own backyard, well worth the watch because I have had a Nashville Warbler and 4 hummingbirds since January. A number of other species have come to visit all the feeders including a Red-winged Blackbird female, another Field Sparrow, Cedar Waxwings along with tons of robins to take drinks and baths in the yard. And I got to help band Florida Scrub-jays and go to Savannah for a birding trip. All good stuff.

Since I usually include some sort of count data, I am including below some statistics comparing fall of 2008 to 2009.

Top 10 birds banded for Fall 2009 as compared to Fall 2008:

	Species	2009	2008	% Hatch Year
1.	Myrtle Warbler	67 (2)	37	81%
2.	Common Yellowthroat	41 (1)	49	47%
3.	Gray Catbird	31 (3)	33	81%
4.	Red-eyed Vireo	26 (9)	6	77%
5.	Black-throated Blue Warbler	17 (6)	10	59%
6.	White-eyed Vireo	15 (4)	8	87%
7.	Ovenbird	15 (5)	13	27%
8.	Carolina Wren	10		30%
9.	Northern Waterthrush	8		38%
10.	American Redstart	5		20%
11	Black and White Warbler	5		60%
12.	Worm-eating Warbler	5 (10)	6	60%

The number in ( ) is the position the species held in 2008. This is from a report I send to the "North American Bird Banding Journal."


Field Sparrow	Gray Catbird

A new study of undertail coverts of Myrtle Warbler juveniles	I track abnormalities I encounter. This MYWA had unusually large nares (nostrils)

The last Ruby-crowned Kinglet of the fall season	Northern Mockingbird

The last bird on the last day of the fall season, a banded MYWA!	A cold morning but success in capturing and banding a juvenile Florida Scrub-jay. Photo courtesy of Barbara Roberts. By the way, those claws are sharp!!!

The Nashville Warbler hanging around my yard since January 22!!!	The adult male Ruby-throated Hummingbird in my yard all winter! I have 4 hummingbirds in total and one is being scrutinized for possibly being a Black-chinned Hummingbird.