06-19-14 Bird Field Note

06-19-14 Bird Field Note

June 19, 2014

Kate Stone's Bird Field Note details Lewis's Woodpecker netting, songbird banding, and field observations.

Lewis’s Woodpeckers.........1-6 ASC: Songbird banding .....7-9 Field observations...........10-17 Bird Field Note June 13, 2014 Lewis’s Woodpeckers, Songbird Banding, Field Observations Kate Stone

We began field efforts to capture Lewis’s Woodpeckers. We set up suet feeders at 9 stations near known breeding sites to acclimate woodpeckers to feeding. The trash can lid over the feeder mimics our trap, which drops a net down from above the feeder. We saw woodpeckers feeding at almost all of our stations.

We caught our first and only woodpecker of the week at the marmot colony.

colony. Color bands allowed us to re-sight this individual feeding on suet at the Orchard House within 2 hours of release.

release. The young marmots kept a close watch on our trapping activities.

As nest initiation began, the woodpeckers associated with specific nest trees and holes. We may place nets over low-enough cavities.

Despite flooded conditions over much of the floodplain, the Avian Science Center began songbird banding. They caught 15 species, with Gray Catbirds and House Wrens dominating captures.

An after-second-year male Black-headed Grosbeak displayed a large white wing patch.

A branchling Great Horned Owl sits in a cottonwood high above the floodplain floor.

floor. Most Great Horned Owl nests fledged weeks ago.

ago. Raptor View Research Institute banded this male American Kestrel (AK-13) in 2011 in Tongue Creek. He disappeared until last week. Then we saw him three days in a row in the cottonwoods next to the marmot colony.