Good things come in pairs

With 26 birds caught, today marked the second great off-site banding day in a row! Also, the banders were treated to (a sighting of) an Eastern Phoebe--one of two seen by the Palomarin crew today!

In between net-runs, Xeronimo, Francesca, Dan and I were chatting and watching birds when a flycatcher flew in about 30 feet from us. I looked over and mentioned how that's no Black Phoebe we're looking at. So, I picked up my bins, and to my surprise there was an Eastern Phoebe just hanging out wagging its tail. I grabbed my camera, but I was one second too late. When I went for a photo, the bird was gone. We all went searching, but all we found was this Black Phoebe.

Black Phoebe on a perch near where the Eastern Phoebe flew [Photo by Cory Ritter]

 Time for the next net-run! So, we went back to banding, and we had a total of 26 birds to take our minds off of the EAPH:

Bewick's Wren - 3
Song Sparrow - 4
Hutton's Vireo - 1
Pacific Wren - 2
Hermit Thrush - 2
Fox Sparrow - 5
Chestnut-backed Chickadee - 2
Ruby-crowned Kinglet - 4
Varied Thrush - 2
Western Scrub-Jay - 1

Just yesterday I was talking about how I had yet to get a good look of a Varied Thrush, but today I got a pretty decent look!

A beautiful female Varied Thrush [Photo by Cory Ritter]

Also, we had another run-in with a Western Scrub-Jay, which is always a cool bird to have in-hand!

A friendly after-hatch-year Western Scrub-Jay biting French's finger [Photo by Cory Ritter]

Another interesting bird today was a Bewick's Wren recapture. This bird had retained one secondary on the right wing, but the left wing had all new flight feathers. I will go further into molting strategies, and how certain flight-feather replacement sequences can be used to tell the age of birds in a future post. For now, just take a look at what a retained flight feather looks like.

Bewick's Wren showing one, duller brown, retained secondary among the other darker brown flight feathers. [Photo by Cory Ritter]

Bewick's Wren showing flight feathers of a uniform age. Notice this wing shows no contrastingly colored feathers. [Photo by Cory Ritter]

*phoeBEE - PHOEbee*

What's that? Oh, well that's the Eastern Phoebe that came back about an hour and a half after the first observation. This time it was being much more cooperative!

Eastern Phoebe perched on a power-line [Photo by Cory Ritter]

Eastern Phoebe perched on a power-line [Photo by Cory Ritter]

Eastern Phoebe (on top) scuffling with a Black Phoebe [Photo by Cory Ritter]

The first spotting of the Eastern Phoebe at our off-site banding station was at about 9:50 am PST, and our second sighting at the banding site was at 11:10 am PST.  Meanwhile, around 10:30 am PST, Luke was watching an Eastern Phoebe in outer Point Reyes--at a site over five miles away (straight-line).

So, the Palomarin crew enjoyed two excellent off-site banding days in a row, and two Eastern Phoebes in one day!

By Cory Ritter