Outdoor Adventures with Gary Lee - Vol. 311
More birds caught in the fiftieth year of banding at the Crown Point Banding Station, and we just got out of there before an intense storm hit the area. Taking down camp and the nets we got hit with a quick downpour with a few more nets to take down but the canopies were still up protecting our books and records. Volunteers worked through the rain getting in the last nets taken down around ten AM. We did get three new birds banded that morning, a Northern Waterthrush, a Swainson's Thrush and three baby Eastern Bluebirds from a box giving us fifty-nine different species banded during the two weeks. The total birds banded during our stay was 670 birds which is about average, and we had nets down for a couple of days during heavy rain showers.
Blue Jays won the most in the numbers with 185 and the Yellow Rumped Warblers came in second with about 150 of them banded. The Gray Catbirds made a run near the end but didn’t catch the Warblers as they would only come in ones and twos in a net, but when the warblers hit the nets there would be ten to fifteen in a net. Close to one hundred birds were seen and heard in the area during our two weeks stay, probably the best of these were six Black Terns seen during the big count day flying over the bay by the beach, a little later a small flock of Bonaparte’s Gulls were seen from the beach. All the Woodpeckers were in the area during our two weeks, but we didn’t catch a Pileated or Hairy Woodpecker. We had a Hairy Woodpecker in the nets, but it got out before we got to pick it out. We did have a big hole in one of our lower nets which I think was a Ruffed Grouse flying at high speed who went right on through.
We did catch a second Sharp Shinned Hawk, and the American Kestrels were nesting not far away in a nest box, but we never did catch one. I remember getting one years ago when they were nesting in a box on the barn. There were three nesting pairs of Eastern Bluebirds, but I never heard them singing. The Tree Swallows were still building nests in several boxes as the rain, and cold put them a little behind. House Wrens were working on a few boxes also as they filled them right to the entrance hole with little sticks and nest right in the bottom of the box. A few years back while checking boxes I found a gray tree frog in one of the boxes with a couple of lady friends. The Tree Swallows were sitting on eggs in that box and didn’t mind the frogs being there. I found one tree frog in a different box this year as I took out the old nest that was in there.
While putting up the nets that first day we found a few baby painted turtles which had just hatched out walking around in the wet grass. They were about the size of a fifty-cent piece. On the day of the celebration in the fort a lady found one in the courtyard and brought it over to us as she thought it might get stepped on with all the marching going on there. I put it in the old well site near our net lanes, and it was still there when we left.
We had many school and adult groups visit this year, some who ducked the rain showers and many got to release what we call student birds. They will get notified if their bird returns in future years. We did get many returns this year from previous years which adds to our data.
Some wildflowers were out all around the site, white elderberry, blue violets, white baneberry, cuckoo flower, blood root, red columbine and the apple and lilacs were in full bloom giving the hummers plenty to feed on. We did get ten hummers to band.
Speaking of banding hummers, we will be at Stillwater this Sunday banding them 8am to 11, but that’s another story. See ya.
Photo above: Baby Turtle and a Bottle Cap
