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Our Woodland Bird Nursery + Highlights from Spring Migration

July 2, 2016 By Blake Goll

Great spangled fritillary on Common milkweed. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
Great spangled fritillary on Common milkweed. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff

Two weeks ago the Strawberry Moon rose within the Cusp of Magic.  In times past this full moon was so named because it occurred when the Native Americans were harvesting their ripe summer strawberries.   Though the wild meadows of Rushton are not filled with strawberries, the magical moonbeams must have whispered something sweet that night to the Common Milkweed, charming it into florescence as the moonlight hailed the official start of the lazy hazy days of summer.
Just as the milkweed fields are now saturated with the bustling activity of pollinators and other insects, the woods have come to life with the flurry of baby birds!  If there is a lazy season in a bird’s annual life cycle, it is certainly not this one.  One pair of adult chickadees, for example, must work together to find and bring up to 500 caterpillars to their hungry nestlings each day.  For this reason it is imperative that there are native trees around like oak, black cherry and American elm from which to forage as these support myriad more caterpillar species than do nonnatives like gingko and pear trees. (Read an article to learn more about this topic here.)

Eastern tent caterpillars are a favorite of many birds and use black cherry as a host among many others. Photo by Ian Gardner
Eastern tent caterpillars are a favorite of many birds and use black cherry as a host among others. Photo by Ian Gardner

The Rushton bird banding team is currently working to document the breeding  bird population of the mature woodland for what is now the 6th summer of participation in MAPS.  MAPS stands for Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survival and is truly one of the more rigorous of banding projects to which a banding station can contribute.  The Institute for Bird Populations has strict protocol and special banding codes, which we and about 500 other U.S. MAPS stations abide by in order to generate meaningful and comparable information on population changes and dynamics, survivorship and productivity.    We have just begun snagging newly fledged birds in our nets and are about to enter what’s called the Super Baby Period that will continue through August.  We take care to release these fresh flyers back near the net from whence they were abducted because it’s likely their confused parents are nearby and still diligently feeding them.  Many birds continue feeding their young for weeks after they can fly on their own.

A juvenile Wood Thrush that is most likely still being fed by parents. Photo by Bracken Brown
A juvenile Wood Thrush of Rushton Woods. Photo by Bracken Brown.

One of the things we love best about MAPS— besides all the cute fuzzy baby birds— is that we capture a lot of our own Ovenbirds, Gray Catbirds, Wood Thrush and Veery that we banded back in 2011 or 12.  If these birds were Second Year birds then, that makes them around 7 years old now!  These birds exhibit extreme site fidelity and fitness, returning to Rushton each summer after traveling hundreds of miles to and from Central and South America.  I wonder where these amazing birds would go if they ever returned to find that Rushton wasn’t there?
Here are some highlights from this MAPS season thus far:

First Gray Catbird baby this June. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
First Gray Catbird baby this June. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
Juvenile Tufted Titmouse. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
Juvenile Tufted Titmouse. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
Downy Woodpecker fledgling in June. Juvenile Tufted Titmouse. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
Downy Woodpecker fledgling in June. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
Adult Hairy Woodpecker. Downy Woodpecker fledgling in June. Juvenile Tufted Titmouse. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
Adult Hairy Woodpecker. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
Adult Ovenbird. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
Adult Ovenbird. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
Adult Wood Thrush. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
Adult Wood Thrush. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
Lifelong Learning Of Chester County students visited the station in June. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
Lifelong Learning Of Chester County students were delighted to visit the station in June . Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
Eastern Towhee nest in June. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
Eastern Towhee nest near the banding station in June. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
Adult Eastern towhee. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
Adult Eastern towhee. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff

Unfortunately, we cannot open MAPS banding to the public besides a select few special classes.  This is because of the strict protocol and also the fact that we want to minimize the disturbance in our woodland office so as to respect the nesting birds —some of which build their precious nests in low saplings, shrubs and even the forest floor near our station and along the net trails.  For this reason our summer banding sessions are only once every ten days.  This time of year, we treat Rushton Woods with hushed reverence  because it may be one of the most important bird nurseries in our area.
If you are itching to get out and see bird banding, you won’t have to wait long.  Fall migration banding is actually right around the corner and will begin the end of August.  Every Tuesday and Thursday through November, we’ll be open to the public.  Fall is always our most fruitful  bird banding season because the population has been proliferated by all the summer babies.  Our total catch numbers fall close to 1,000 birds in contrast to the average of 350 for spring.  Part of this disparity between spring and fall is a reflection of bird mortality; of the 20 billion birds that comprise the fall songbird population, only about half will return the following spring.  It is estimated that 1 billion of those deaths are from building collisions during migration.  Climate change, landscape changes and loss of stopover habitat also play roles in this multi-faceted tragedy.

Black-throated Green Warbler. Photo by Nathan Lewis. This is a species that we see during migration but has declined as a nesting bird in parts of the northeast due to climate change.
Black-throated Green Warbler. Photo by Nathan Lewis. This is a species that we see during migration but has declined as a nesting bird in parts of the northeast in part due to climate change.

The ugly truth is that we’ve lost half of our birds in the past 40 years because humans are changing the environment faster than birds can cope.  To raise awareness about the urgency of bird conservation, we hosted two sold-out showings of the new award-winning documentary, The Messenger, at King of Prussia IMAX this winter and spring.  View the trailer below and visit the website to see this modern day Silent Spring for yourself.

Luckily, Rushton provides migrant birds with a crucial stopover site that they can always depend on in an ever-changing landscape.  It’s like your favorite neighborhood Wawa that never goes out of business and that you can always count on for the best gas prices and hoagies!  While some birds use Rushton as merely a convenience store along their travels, many others treat it more like a Bed and Breakfast—some staying for weeks on end to fatten up for their travels.
We get important information about stopover ecology from migrant birds that are recaptured within the same season.  There was the Black-throated Blue Warbler that doubled her fat in just a week of dining out at Rushton last fall.  A Lincoln’s Sparrow gained 3 grams in about a week as well, and a Clay-colored Sparrow graced the Rushton B &B with his portentous presence for a few days. We also remember a curious little Worm-eating Warbler that stayed from September 3rd  well into October of last year.  Did he overstay his welcome?   Who knows when he finally decided to migrate, but we do know that one Gray Catbird decided to stay at Rushton all winter rather than migrate to the tropics like the rest of his kind.  He was heard calling from the snow covered thicket during the Christmas Bird Count in December! We’ll call him the White Walker.

Clay-colored Sparrow. October 2015. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
Clay-colored Sparrow. October 2015. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff

This past spring was extremely cool and rainy, so we had to cancel many of our scheduled banding days.  However, we still fell within our average range of about 350 birds total.  All things considered, it was a great migration season in terms of birds banded as well as people educated through our program.  Songbirds may be small, but they are unequivocally powerful in their ability to inspire and evoke concern for the environment.  Enjoy the following photo review of this spring’s banding season.

Gray-cheeked Thrush being photo-bombed by a bander this May. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
Gray-cheeked Thrush being photo-bombed by a bander this May. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
Northern Waterthrush in May. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
Northern Waterthrush in May. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
Blue Jay in May. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
Blue Jay in May. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
Least Flycatcher in May. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
Least Flycatcher in May. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
Open Connections Naturalist Club visited in May and were treated to a White-eyed Vireo. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
Open Connections Naturalist Club visited in May and were treated to a White-eyed Vireo. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
A professional children's book author visited us in May and took beautiful notes on what she learned. Check out here website here!
A professional children’s book illustrator visited us in May and took beautiful notes on what she learned. Check out Kate Garchinsky’s website here!
Comparing Ovenbird ages.
Comparing Ovenbird ages. The one on the right is what we call After Second Year. The one on the left is Second Year.
Westtown Elementary students visited the banding station in May. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
Westtown Elementary students visited the banding station in May. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
Boys Latin of Philadelphia Charter School visited the station in May and were amazed. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
Boys Latin of Philadelphia Charter School visited the station in May and were amazed at the beauty of a female Baltimore Oriole. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
A young naturalist marvels at a shimmering Tree Swallow before release. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
A young naturalist marvels at a shimmering Tree Swallow before release. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
A handsome Tree Swallow in May. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
A handsome Tree Swallow in May. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
Male Canada Warbler in May. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
Male Canada Warbler in May. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
A Drexel co-op student takes a blood sample from a Yellow-rumped Warbler for a study on how Lyme disease bacteria moves through the environment.
A Drexel co-op student takes a blood sample from a Yellow-rumped Warbler for a study on how Lyme disease bacteria moves through the environment.
Worm-eating Warbler in May. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
Worm-eating Warbler in May. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
Yellow-rumped Warbler in April. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
Yellow-rumped Warbler in April. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
Magnolia Warbler (After second year male). May 2016. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
Magnolia Warbler (After second year male) in May.. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
Male American Goldfinch in April. Photo by Blake Goll
Male American Goldfinch in April. Photo by Blake Goll
Hermit Thrush before release in April. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
Hermit Thrush before release in April. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
Yellow-billed Cuckoo eyeing up an Eastern tent caterpillar nest. Photo by Ian Gardner. A pair of these cuckoos nested near the banding station this spring!
Yellow-billed Cuckoo eyeing up an Eastern tent caterpillar nest in June. Photo by Ian Gardner. A pair of these cuckoos nested near the banding station this spring!

Take an early morning stroll along the trails of Rushton Woods Preserve, breathe in the extraordinary blooms of the Common milkweed in the wild meadows, marvel at the bounty of insect life in the fields and let the ethereal song of the Wood Thrush fill your soul in the cool, green forest.
There’s a lot going on in the woods,
Blake

Dusky salamander at Rushton in May. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff
Dusky salamander at Rushton in May. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff

 

Filed Under: Bird Banding, Bird Conservation Tagged With: Bird banding, Common milkweed, Gray Catbird, MAPS banding, migration, native tree, stopover ecology

Rushton Has Birdiest Summer in Five Years! + Making Sense of Migratory Connectivity

August 15, 2015 By Communications Team

Goldfinch on sunflower. Photo by James Weisgerber
American Goldfinch on sunflower. Photo by James Weisgerber
WAIT! If you’re a subscriber reading this in email format (ugh!), please click on the title of the post right above in order to view the blog in the glory it was meant to have on the actual blog website.

The height of summer is upon us.  Amidst the heavy haze the happy green hum of life reverberates throughout the fields, meadows and forest.  Wildflowers, at their peak under the solar spotlight, are tended by busy bumblebees, honeybees, tiger swallowtails, spangled fritillaries and red admirals.  Hummingbirds join the dance as they flit about like garden sprites.  Cicadas lend an appropriately incessant voice to the heat; they are the chorus of summer’s daytime song.   The lazy, undulating “per-chik-oree” call of the sweet goldfinches and the begging calls of their young signal the close of the avian nesting season.  
That’s right! Acorns are dropping, blackbirds are flocking and fall songbird migration is just around the corner.  In fact, beginning in September the Rushton bird banding station will be open Tuesday and Thursday mornings for public visitation between the hours of sunrise and 11am.  Fall migration extends through the first week of November.

Carolina Wren singing. Photo by Mike Rosengarten
Carolina Wren singing in summer. Photo by Mike Rosengarten

The Rushton banding crew just packed it in for the summer MAPS (Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship) season.  The final week in July marked the last of the eight summer banding sessions required  each year for this banding project, the aim of which is to understand the breeding birds of Rushton and how their population changes from year to year.  This year was our fifth MAPS year and it turned out to be the best!  We processed 249 birds —7 more birds than our 2011 record of 242.  In each of the three years in between, we didn’t make it to 200 birds.
We couldn’t have been more thrilled with this season’s catch.  All summer long the forest rang with  abundant, ethereal songs of Wood Thrush and Veery, and baby birds abounded!  Breeding species included Ovenbird, American Robin, Gray Catbird, Tufted Titmouse, Wood Thrush, Carolina Wren, Downy Woodpecker, White-breasted Nuthatch, Veery and Common Yellowthroat to name a few.  Below are some mug shots:
Tufted Titmouse. Photo by Blake Goll
Tufted Titmouse. Photo by Blake Goll

Common Yellowthroat banded at Rushton this May during MAPS. Photo by Blake Goll
Common Yellowthroat banded at Rushton this May during MAPS. Photo by Blake Goll

Young Downy Woodpecker, hatched this June at Rushton.
Baby Downy Woodpecker, hatched this June at Rushton!

White-breasted Nuthatch banded this July at Rushton during MAPS
White-breasted Nuthatch banded this July at Rushton during MAPS

The Gray Catbird—named for it’s mewing call— always makes up the bulk of our catch, so we call it our “bread and butter” bird.  Without it, sometimes we feel we’d be “out of business”!
A Philadelphia student gazes at a Gray Catbird before release at Rushton this spring.
A Philadelphia student gazes at a Gray Catbird before release at Rushton this spring.

It’s easy to take this common backyard bird for granted, but it is actually quite a fascinating little bird.  Catbirds are a widespread species nesting in 46 of the lower 48 states as well as southern Canada.  Some winter in the Gulf Coast and Florida with others traveling farther south to Mexico, the Carribean and Central America where they share the forest with jaguars, toucans and pit viper snakes!  The Catbird is one of the few well-traveled birds that will nest in a shrub in your yard rather than requiring a remote woodland like many other neotropical migrants that just pass through.
Gray Catbird preparing for a bath. Photo by Dustin Welch.
Gray Catbird preparing for a backyard bath. Photo by Dustin Welch.

Catbirds are also one of the few species that can learn to recognize and eject speckled brown cowbird eggs from their nest of beautiful turquoise eggs.  The Brown-headed Cowbird is a parasitic species that lays its eggs in other birds’ nests, thus avoiding all parental care!  It can be a real problem for the nesting success of some already threatened species like Wood Thrush (65% population decline since 1968) that don’t recognize and eject cowbird eggs.  Cowbird babies often out-compete the thrush chicks.  This is one of the reasons why unfragmented expanses of forest are so important; deep woods give Wood Thrush a bigger buffer zone against shady cowbirds that prefer edge habitat.
Wood Thrush on nest in Rushton Woods. Photo by Adrian Binns
Wood Thrush on nest in Rushton Woods. Photo by Adrian Binns

Studies have shown about a 60 percent annual survival rate for catbirds, but if they do survive the winter and migration, chances are the same wily catbird will return to your yard. (Many songbirds exhibit this site fidelity).  The oldest catbird was almost 18 years old, banded as a chick in Maryland and recaptured that many years later by bird banders in New Jersey!
During MAPS this summer we were surprised to recapture one of our banded Gray Catbirds that was originally banded by us in 2010 as an after-hatching-year bird, meaning it was at least in its second year back then.  That means this bird is at least 7 years old now!  It’s marvelous to think that this migrant has been so successful and made it back to Rushton Woods every summer.  This is especially significant to us because most of Rushton’s Gray Catbirds are young and inexperienced.  Hopefully, he’s teaching ’em a thing or two!
If you recall, this spring was very cold and long.  All of the trees and flowers were running a couple weeks late, and allergy season lasted longer as well.  This weird weather did not make for an exceptional spring migration.  We banded 344 birds of 49 species (compared to 449 birds the previous spring).
American Robin in spring. Photo by Santosh Shanmuga
American Robin in spring. Photo by Santosh Shanmuga

Interestingly, we actually still had migrants, like a Gray-cheeked Thrush, roaming the woods of Rushton during the first week of MAPS banding at the end of May when Rushton’s breeders were kicking off their nesting season.  The Gray-cheeked Thrush is a reclusive bird that nests in dense stands of spruce and balsalm fir in cool boreal forests of Canada (the nursery of an estimated 3 billion North American songbirds of over 300 species).  As one of the most northern nesting species that visits Rushton during migration, we shook our heads in awe thinking about the many miles the thrush had yet to go.  Click here to learn more about the importance of and threats facing our boreal songbird nursery.
Gray-cheeked Thrush at Rushton
Gray-cheeked Thrush at Rushton

Anyway, not all of our birds were gray this spring.  Even though overall numbers were slightly down, the species diversity was satisfying and some species had increased.   Orioles, including Baltimore and Orchard, were more abundant this year than ever before—a tribute to the flourishing farm edge habitat that orioles love.   Such enticing border trees may not have been spared on a typical large-scale, conventional farm.
Baltimore Oriole banded at Rushton this May. Photo by Blake Goll
Male Baltimore Oriole banded at Rushton this May. Photo by Blake Goll

Adult male Orchard Oriole banded at Rushton this May. Photo by Blake Goll
Adult male Orchard Oriole banded at Rushton this May. Photo by Blake Goll

An American Woodcock—also grateful for the respect of our sustainable farm on the surrounding thicket habitat— graced our nets this spring with its alien eyes, prehensile bill and giant shorebird feet!
American Woodcock at Rushton this spring. Photo by Blake Goll
American Woodcock at Rushton this spring. Photo by Blake Goll

Some other favorites of this spring’s catch included a pair of no-neck, aerodynamic, bug-gulping Barn Swallows and a handful of spectacularly handsome Blue-winged Warblers, a species that we haven’t caught since 2010.  In fact, we think we might have had some Blue-winged Warblers nesting at Rushton this year because we heard their “bee-buzz” song well into June.  A bird of old fields and shrublands, it should find a happy home in Rushton.  Another bird with similar nesting habitat requirements, the Prairie Warbler, was also heard singing off and on from the fields this spring and summer, possibly indicating nest activity.  These could be two new breeding species for Rushton;  it’s a good neighborhood and the word is getting out!
Adult male Blue-winged Warbler banded at Rushton this April.
Adult male Blue-winged Warbler banded at Rushton this April.

Blue-winged Warbler wing
Blue-winged Warbler wing

Barn Swallows banded at Rushton this May.
Barn Swallows banded at Rushton this May.

Prairie Warbler
Prairie Warbler. Photo by Mike Rosengarten

Blue-gray Gnatcatchers were omnipresent this spring, and quite a few of the little things ended up in our nets.  At only 5-7 grams, they can construct their nests with delicate materials that hummingbirds use, like spiderwebs and lichen.
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher at Rushton this spring.
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher at Rushton this spring. Photo by Blake Goll.

A little disconcerting was the absence of a wood warbler that is usually one of Rushton’s most common warblers during migration: the Black -throated Blue Warbler.  We normally band 10 of these each season, but only one checked into the station this spring.  Could this indicate a problem like habitat loss or a weather event on the wintering grounds in the Carribean?
Female Black-throated Blue Warbler banded at Rushton this May.
Female Black-throated Blue Warbler banded at Rushton this May.

We couldn’t have known what a productive summer this would be by simply looking at the results of this year’s sub-par spring banding season.  We might have had a better idea if we’d known about habitat conditions for our birds where they overwintered.  Studies of migratory connectivity are now illuminating the importance of the wintering or nonbreeding grounds in determining the success and behavior of a bird on its breeding grounds.
For example, if a female bird overwinters in poor habitat, she may be underweight and have to delay migration.  Delayed migration means getting to the breeding grounds after all the best males are taken (with the best territories). Now left with the dregs, she may have a low- success breeding season or be forced to seek extra-mate copulations with higher quality males to make up for her losses.
Migratory connectivity is the annual movement of birds between summer and winter locations, including stopover sites—those habitats of plentiful food and shelter that are critical for resting and refueling.   Knowing what’s going on in the entire year in the life of a bird is fundamental to being able to understand and protect it in the long-run. For this reason many scientists are now combining traditional banding with modern tracking technology like satellite transmitters and light-level geolocators in order to better understand avian movements.
Magnolia Warbler banded at Rushton. This is a common warbler that breeds in fir and spruce forests of the north and winters in the tropics.
Magnolia Warbler using Rushton as a stopover site. This is a common warbler that breeds in fir and spruce forests of the north and winters in mangrove forests in the tropics.

This combined approach has recently revealed that our backyard catbirds— the mid-Atlantic and New England breeders—are Catbirds of the Carribean!  They also may overwinter in Florida, whereas the Midwest population overwinters in Central America.
The strength of migratory connectivity varies from species to species, which has important conservation implications.  For example, a species exhibiting strong migratory connectivity means most of the population may overwinter in one small area rather than spreading out though a larger range.  These species may be more susceptible to climate change or habitat loss.
Take a virtual walk in the woods with an ornithologist in New Hampshire to learn about the migratory connectivity of a small songbird that also breeds in the woods of Rushton; click here to watch the 3- minute video by the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center of the recapture of an Ovenbird with a GPS tag!   GPS tags have only recently become lightweight enough to be used on small songbirds.  They have more accuracy than geolocators because they collect data from satellites rather than measuring light levels to estimate location.
Ovenbird banded at Rushton this June during MAPS banding.
Ovenbird banded at Rushton this June during MAPS banding.

Radio transmitter tags are also emerging on the cutting edge of wildlife tracking because they are lightweight and relatively inexpensive compared to GPS.  The animal does not have to be recaptured to retrieve the location data; it just needs to pass by a receiving tower.    This spring 36 Gray-cheeked Thrushes were tagged with radio transmitters in Colombia, many of which were soon detected by towers in North America!  One awe-inspiring individual flew 2,019 miles from Colombia to Indiana in 3.3 days, which means it flew 3 days straight with only an hour or two of rest!   Click here to see the map of this astounding feat.
Wing of long distance flier, the Gray-cheeked Thrush.
Wing of long distance flier, the Gray-cheeked Thrush.

Technology, bird banding and passionate field scientists are unraveling the mysteries of migratory connectivity, thus making conservation of our declining feathered Earthlings that much more tangible.  Could such technology be coming to a banding station near you in the future?
If you can’t wait to get out to Rushton to see the bird banding, watch this video to get up-close looks at beautiful songbirds at a banding station similar to Rushton, on the coast of Texas.  You will be moved by their take on migratory connectivity and the faces of the local school children getting to release these inter-continental creatures.
Westtown first graders releasing a warbler together after banding at Rushton this May. Photo by Kelsey Lingle.
Westtown first graders releasing a warbler together after banding at Rushton this May. Photo by Kelsey Lingle.

Child holding a banded ovenbird briefly before release at Rushton this May.
Child holding a banded Ovenbird briefly before release at Rushton this May.

There’s a lot going on in the woods,
Blake
 

Filed Under: Bird Banding, Bird Conservation Tagged With: Bird banding, cowbirds, GPS tag, Gray Catbird, Gray-cheeked Thrush, MAPS banding, migratory connectivity, wildlife tracking technology

Last Day of Spring Migration Banding Tomorrow

May 23, 2012 By Communications Team

Come visit the Rushton banding station and see the birds tomorrow morning if you haven’t already!  We will be banding from 6am until 10am.

Remember: the earlier the birdier!

Rusty undertail coverts of Catbird
“Catbird waving good-bye”. (Rusty undertail coverts of Gray Catbird). Photo by Blake Goll.

Bye- Bye migrants!  Until next season…

~Blake

P.S.  Stay tuned for the season wrap-up!

Filed Under: Bird Banding Tagged With: Bird banding, Gray Catbird, Rushton

Bird Babies, MAPS, Monarchs and More!

August 17, 2011 By Communications Team

Feisty Gray Catbird biting finger
A feisty Gray Catbird bites a bander's finger before being released. (Photo by Adrian Binns)

I hope this finds you enjoying the height of your summer and the company of those nosy, gregarious catbirds that have multiplied in your yard!  Sadly, they won’t be here for too much longer. Gray Catbirds as well as many of our other favorite summer birds like Wood Thrush, Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Veery, Scarlet Tanager, Eastern Phoebe, and Common Yellowthroat are finished nesting and are now gearing up for their southern voyage.  This usually involves molting into their “fall clothes” (depending on the species) and then fattening up for migration.  They fill their furcular hollow (the wishbone area) with fat in much the same way as you fill your tank with gas before a long trip!

Young male Baltimore Oriole
This young male Baltimore Oriole nested here this summer. They too will be leaving us soon for their home in South America.

But enough with migration talk for now…We still have another couple of weeks of summer, according to a bird’s calendar!  In fact, there are some birds that are taking their time and still nesting or just finishing up.  Goldfinches are among the last North American birds to nest, usually waiting until July or even early August; this is when milkweed, thistle, and other plants produce their fibrous seeds which goldfinches use as nesting material and the main food source for their young.  They are strict vegetarians and raise their kids that way too, unlike most other seed-eating avian parents.  This is bad news for lazy, young Brown-headed Cowbird moms who think they can get away with shirking their parental duties by dropping off their eggs with goldfinch foster families.  Once hatched, cowbird babies in goldfinch nests never survive because the all-seed diet isn’t enough for them.

Indigo bunting nest attached to sunflower
This surprisingly late nest was found a little over a week ago in a farm field in the area. Can you guess what bird species this precious nest belongs to? It is not a goldfinch nest. It is an open cup of soft leaves, coarse grasses, stems, strips of bark and paper, all held in place and attached to the sunflower with spider web and lined with soft grass and deer hair. It belongs to an Indigo Bunting!

I also want to fill you in on all of the exciting bird happenings of this past month at Rushton, namely the MAPS babies.  MAPS, which stands for Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship, is the most important, data intensive project that a banding station can do.  The program was started in 1989 by the Institute for Bird Populations in Point Reyes, CA, and there are now over 500 certified, constant-effort MAPS stations all over North America, including Rushton Woods Preserve as of this summer!

As an official MAPS station, we banded once every 10 days during the breeding season, following strict IBP protocol that ensures that our data can be easily compared to continent-wide data.  This involved clearing and setting up 10 new strategic net lanes throughout the preserve, with each net a certain distance apart from the others within an 8 hectare total area.  Then we completed a rigorous Habitat Survey Analysis of all the habitat types, plant species, and botanical structural composition of our study area.  Banding in the oppressive heat of the summer while trying to ward off ticks and Lyme disease was another challenge, but we enjoyed every minute of it knowing it’s all for the birds!  OK, so maybe someone didn’t exactly enjoy the Lyme disease…

The banding process
Doris Mcgovern (Master Bander) and Lisa Kiziuk (who holds a sub-permit under Doris) efficiently processing birds. Notice all of the essential MAPS banding tools and materials, including the coffee mug on the right.

Our resulting data will contribute to critical information on the ecology, conservation, and management of North American landbird populations, and the factors responsible for changes in their populations.  Check out the IBP website to learn more about MAPS and the other important projects underway as well as their training programs.  There, you will also find interesting bird banding resources and publications, including the MAPS annual report.

I’d say Rushton’s first MAPS season was very successful!  We have records on 242 birds total, including 138 new birds and 98 recaptures.  Many of those recaptures were birds we had caught in one of the previous springs (2010 or 2011) in our migration nets.  Other recaptures were birds that had bad luck and got stuck in our ‘webs’ more than once this summer.  We recorded a total of 42 species on the Breeding Bird Survey (or BBS, another part of the MAPS protocol); each species was designated as a Confirmed Breeder, Probable Breeder or merely as Observed based on the quality of our observations over the 8 banding sessions.

We are in the process of entering and making sense of our data and will hopefully be able to give you a more comprehensive summary soon!  For example, if we analyze the data and find that most of the breeding catbirds were Second Year (SY) birds rather than older adults, this could indicate that the habitat isn’t so great since we know older males get the better territories.  In another scenario, if we have all older birds and no returning SY individuals of a neotropical migrant, this could indicate high mortality on the wintering grounds.  However, we always need a big picture before we can make such conclusions, which is what continent-wide MAPS data from constant-effort MAPS stations gives us.

We do know that we banded oodles of adorable babies of 16 different species, so 16 of those 42 species on the BBS were without a doubt breeding successfully in Rushton!   See if you can identify the species of each of our babies pictured below.  Then scroll down for the answers.

Juvenile woodthrush

MAPS-Baby veery

Common yellowthroat male Hatch Year

Ovenbird

Tufted Titmouse

MAPS Banding Hatch Year Cardinal

Baby Downy woodpecker

Blue jay

Baby indigo bunting

Some of the babies are more “babyish” looking than the others, depending on how far along they are in their first molt.  You can tell baby birds apart from adults by looking for wispy under-tail coverts and other wispy feathers on the body.  Juvenile birds also usually have bare “wing pits” and purple featherless bellies that can be mistaken as brood patches.  (A brood patch is a bare belly on adult female birds who pluck their tummy feathers out in order to be better able to monitor and regulate the temperature of their eggs).  Another telltale sign of a baby bird is the presence of “bird lips,” which are just yellow fleshy parts on the corners of the bird’s bill that disappear as the bird matures.  There are species-specific clues to juvenile bird ID too: thrushes are usually speckled, towhees’ eyes are black and turn red with age, cardinals’ bills start out light and turn red with age, etc.

The species whose baby birds we banded included (in the order pictured above) Wood Thrush, Veery, Common Yellowthroat, Ovenbird, Tufted Titmouse, Northern Cardinal, Downy Woodpecker, Blue Jay, Brown Thrasher, and Indigo Bunting.  Did you get them all right?  In addition, we banded babies of Eastern Towhee, Eastern Wood Peewee, American Robin, White Breasted Nuthatch, Carolina Wren, and last and most abundant, Gray Catbird.  We are proud of our list of babies!  Of course, we would be more satisfied if we had Kentucky Warbler (which has been recorded as using Rushton in the past) and/or Louisiana Waterthrush.  What could this indicate about our habitat?

Neither of these prized species were seen or heard this summer, although we did band a Louisiana Waterthrush in May during migration.  Since we did not catch or hear the waterthrush during MAPS banding, we cannot confirm that they breed here.  However, we did hear him singing vigorously this spring, and it is thought that unlike many other warblers, he does not usually sing until he arrives on his breeding grounds.  Waterthrush are also known to be early breeders.  Named the “feathered trout” of forest streams, the Louisiana Waterthrush is a bio-indicator of water quality because it feeds primarily on aquatic macroinvertebrates, like mayfly larva, that are intolerant to acid pH and pollution.  Therefore, the presence of Louisiana Waterthrush in Rushton shows the importance of the protections that the preserve affords to the Indian Run tributary of Ridley.  Read more about this special bird in the American Birding Association’s article.  Also be sure to check out the accompanying WebExtra with comments by PA ornithologists.

Louisiana Waterthrush
The Louisiana Waterthrush we caught in May. Pardon his disheveled appearance. Always straighten a bird's feathers before taking his picture! We owe it to them.

Here’s an interesting birding tip from Cornell Lab of Ornithology:  To differentiate between Louisiana and Northern Waterthrush, remember that the pitch of the Louisiana’s song usually descends just as the hilly stream habitat it prefers, while the beginning notes of the Northern’s song stay on the same pitch just like the flat bogs and waters it prefers.

This month, we will be focusing on a different kind of migrant of equal importance, the Monarch butterfly. I’m pleased to announce that in addition to becoming an official MAPS station, Rushton Woods Preserve became an official Monarch Waystation this month!  We are on the University of Kansas’ national registry of hundreds of Monarch Waystations that provide milkweeds, nectar plants, and shelter for monarchs throughout their delicate annual cycle of reproduction and migration.  This nationwide conservation effort is extremely important because Monarch butterflies are declining due to habitat loss from development, frequent mowing, and widespread use of herbicides in croplands, pastures, and roadsides.  Invasive milkweed pests and monarch parasitoids are also threats to the population.  It is our duty to do everything we can to ensure that this miraculous migration continues to inspire people of all ages for generations to come.

Monarch on wildflowers
Male Monarch on Joe Pye Weed in a demonstration native wildflower meadow at the Willistown Conservation Trust's headquarters. Visit our model wildflower gardens anytime!

I encourage you to learn more about and/or participate in some of the citizen science projects for monarch conservation including Monarch Watch through the University of Kansas (migration tagging and waystation certification) and the Monarch Larva Monitoring Project (MLMP) through the University of Minnesota.  These projects are fun for children and adults and crucial to monarch research and conservation.  You are also more than welcome to come out to Rushton to visit our spectacular Monarch Waystation; the fields are full of Common Milkweed, Monarch adults and larvae, and other flowers and butterflies.  Also, please let me know if you or a friend would like to collect data for Rushton for MLMP.  Rushton is a certified MLMP site, but we haven’t had the time to monitor!  MLMP data is important to understanding how and why monarch populations vary in time and space.

The PA Young Birders meeting this month is Monarch Madness!  We will meet at Rushton Farm from 6-7:30 PM on Wednesday August 24.  Join us as we explore the fascinating lives of Monarch butterflies and contribute to their conservation.  We will be surveying our milkweed patch for Monarch larvae and other interesting creatures that call milkweed home.  Afterwards, we will send our citizen science data to the MLMP.  There should also be a few migrant Monarch adults around for us to tag for Monarch Watch, although the peak migration is projected to occur around the second week of September for our latitude.  Catching Monarchs for tagging is no easy task because they are actually faster than you’d expect, so make sure your children have on their running shoes!  Tagging records have been able to show that the overall migration advances only 25-30 miles a day, but some individuals, like one late season monarch flying from Virginia to Texas, can average 61 miles per day!

For a recap and pictures of our last fun PA Young Birders meeting, “Birds and Beaks”, go to Notes from the Wildside, Adrian Binns’ blog!

Birds and Beaks Class
A PA Young Birder is happy with his "crop" full of bird food!

These days, I’m hearing a change in the night symphony… a subtle crescendo of crickets and a lessening of the cicada choir…  Several leaves of the Black Gum tree in my woods have turned a deep red and spicebush berries are ripening…  There is a certain crispness to the air here and there, and the birds seem a bit more anxious….  Time to shake the dust off those ‘confusing fall warbler’ guides and wipe your ‘bin’ lenses clear! For our dear old friend, Autumn, is near…

And there’s a lot going on the woods,

~Blake

Kirkwood

Filed Under: Bird Banding, Bird Events Tagged With: Baltimore Oriole, Bird banding, Goldfinch, Gray Catbird, Louisiana Waterthrush, MAPS, MLMP, Monarch, Monarch Watch, PA Young Birder

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