Somehow, it seems appropriate for a Flickr Flicker to go viral.
But it's a lot easier to get attention when you're a golden boy.
Flicker intergrade, banded at Richardson Bay Audubon Center
How viral is he? See the photos at the end.
Last weekend I attended a passerine banding workshop led by Peter Pyle. Though I have been banding hawks for 20+ years, my only experience with handling songbirds was from living with zebra finches for about 8 years, and the some songbirds we encountered while raptor banding. Even though I've had them in hand, I've never actually banded one. This was all new... and great.
Peter Pyle preparing to weigh a Golden-crowned Sparrow
The class was held at the Richardson Bay Audubon Center, a small preserve in Tiburon CA, just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. The preserve seems fairly small at first, just a little over ten acres on land, but it also includes a much larger area of baylands - mostly tidal zone/mudflats. Back in the early 60's, underwater lots were being sold with the idea that they'd be filled and buildable. Some local conservationists got smart and bought almost a thousand acres of these lots and were effectively able to stop the filling.
The Lyford House is at the heart of the preserve. Fortunately the weather cooperated and we were able to work outside; we did our banding on the terrace on the bay side of the house. Probably the most scenic banding station anywhere.
The 2-1/2 day class covered the basics of banding activities in both classtime and field time, with a strong focus on sexing and aging birds. Participants had a wide range of experience - some were total newcomers, others had varying levels of previous banding work. Three participants were from the Kern River Preserve in southern California and had been banding passerines for years. There were also two teenage participants; one was a local boy who has been volunteering at the Center, and the other was a girl who'd attended the first workshop the previous month and liked it so much she came back.
On to the birds!
Ruby-crowned Kinglet, one of the tiniest species we banded... but not the smallest!
Raptor banding gave me a general understanding of what was involved, but is also so very different from passerine banding that it was like starting over. (One of my banding friends signed up for the workshop with me, and two others took the October workshop.) It was a major adjustment learning to get comfortable handling such tiny birds. For comparison, our smallest raptors (male sharpies, kestrels and male merlins) weigh in around 100 grams, give or take a few. The average sparrow was about a third of that; warblers were 15-20 grams, and the smallest birds we banded - Bushtits - weighed just 5 grams.
This male Anna's Hummingbird was the lightest bird of all - just 4 grams, I think. We processed it and recorded the data, and released it unbanded since we didn't have hummingbird bands.
Banding data can tell you a lot about birds' lives. Different studies focus on different aspects, but one thing all banding studies can do is give you information about lifespan. The band recovery rate for small birds is very low, maybe a few per thousand banded, and many of those recoveries are from birds recaptured. Sometimes those birds are recaptured within a day or two (which makes sense, since they would likely be in the same area around the nets for a while) but some get caught again after longer periods.
A band so worn and thinning that it was removed and replaced.
Shortly after we began our second day, a Fox Sparrow was captured with an obviously old band. Because they make their living by kicking away in the dirt and leaf litter, it makes sense that its band might show more wear than some other species. The band was noticeably thinning so it was replaced with a fresh one. Kerry, one of the staff from the Center, was pretty sure that the band number might be from one of their sequences from earlier years and went to look it up. No wonder the band looked worn - it had been placed on the sparrow seven years earlier. That lucky recapture gave us some information about how long wild Fox Sparrows can live.
Mother and daughter banding team check out our long-lived Fox Sparrow.
Recaptures sometimes happen along migration routes or in wintering areas, but often happen at the same location where the birds were first banded. During spring and summer, this strongly suggests that it's the birds' breeding territory. In fall, it's a little harder to say. Still it seems a likely story for these two Oak Titmice.
Oak Titmouse, recaptured during workshop
The two Oak Titmice flew into the mistnet together during the workshop. They had been banded on the same day in February 2012 with sequential numbers, indicating that they were captured at roughly the same time back then, too. When they were processed, they were released together. Romeo and Juliet on the micro-scale.
The reason for all the spread-wing photos (and I have dozens more that I'm not posting) is that the extent of molt in the wing is the main clue for aging most songbirds. There are a few different patterns of molt and once you know the pattern for a species, you know which feathers will tell you the bird's age. In most of the species we looked at, the first group of feathers to be replaced is secondary coverts - the block of feathers covering the inner part of the bird's wing (see below).
This Spotted Towhee shows secondary coverts, the block of feathers that cover the secondary flight feathers - easy to see on the towhee because it includes all of those black feathers with white tips along with the smaller solid black feathers above.
Because they are so vulnerable to predation, there is a premium on getting young birds out of the nest as soon as is practical. They grow flimsier feathers in the interest of growing them faster. The body feathers are the weakest of all - the spotty/steaky feathers that you see on baby birds for just a few weeks after they leave the nest. After the birds have been out long enough to taking care of themselves and finding food, they begin to molt and replace those body feathers. At the same time, many of them replace the secondary coverts. At that point, they stop molting to save energy for migration or wintering. If those birds were captured in the spring next year, they'd show the same pattern. That would tell the bander that the bird is in its second year - it has survived its first winter, but it hasn't attempted breeding before. That kind of information is important in understanding population dynamics and the value of habitat, etc.
Adult male Yellow-rumped Warbler, aka Butterbutt.
The mix of adult birds and juveniles is important, and has different implications depending on time of year and location. I think I'll make that a separate diary because this one is already getting very long. How about a few more bird pix?
Lincoln's Sparrow, which is becoming my favorite sparrow.
Peter with a Nuttall's Woodpecker. These guys like oak woodlands.
The fabulous Flicker. When Richardson Bay Audubon posted it on their Facebook page, it got 19,000 views in just four days!
The flicker's head shows characteristics of both red- and yellow-shafted flickers, with the red malar stripe (mustache) typical of a red-shafted, and the red nape mark typical of yellow-shafted. The extent of brown in the face is more like red-shafted.
The flicker's foot. Like other woodpeckers, it is zygodactylic - two toes forward, two toes back - an arrangement that helps with climbing up and down trees. Most birds have three toes forward and one back. In the different families of birds that have the zygodactylic arrangement, they have done it by different mechanisms. Some families evolved to have the outer toe swing back around, and other families evolved with an inner toe moving to the back.
Yikes. There's more to talk about but this is already really long. More next week.
These were a trial run for the banding workshops, and I think Peter will do more in the future. If you're interested, here's a description of the class. There's contact info in there if you're interested in hearing about future workshops.