Four in One

Yesterday was a big listing day for me! One of my many volunteer jobs is assisting with some bird banding, and I figured going in I'd be able to add a bunch of new birds to my list... yesterday proved me correct!

The banding station that I was as is set up in a riparian area on the Bronx Zoo property in the hopes of catching migrating birds. The research that I'm assisting with is focusing on warblers and thrushes, although we record and band everything that we catch. There were so many warblers flying around above the net, I wasn't able to identify them all! One that we caught, and I was able to see up close (and release!) was the black-throated blue warbler.

Two others that we finally caught after watching them walk back and forth just under the net were the ovenbird and northern waterthrush- I was assisting a woman who is very skilled with identifiying, and she helped me with the field markings of those two that will help me identify them in the future. Lastly, flying above us and finally into the net was an American Redstart. I even got to band a Grey Catbird!

It was a great experience, and I hope to get out there again this coming week!


Photo courtesy of Flickr user keithcarver