***The birds are handled by trained personnel of SFFBO and under U.S. Dept of Interior license for research purposes. No birds were hurt during the process.***
I would like to thank Fen and Katie for arranging the trip and her team for demonstrating what they do. I learned a lot on this trip and appreciate the patient work that goes into building research that helps protect our birds and ecosystems.
We began the morning by making our way to the field station and heading out to the research table where Katie, her staff and volunteers banded, sexed, and established the age and condition of the birds and entered the data into their database. When we got out of our cars we scanned the area where we saw Black-necked Stilts, American Avocets, Killdeer, Mallards and a Greater Yellowlegs with a red-tailed Hawk and a fuzzy nestling in the nest on top of the electrical pole. We then made our way to the working area and had quite a few Bewick's Wrens, Black Phoebe, ong Sparrows, a Lesser Goldfinch, a California Towhee and Common Yellowthroats that had been retrieved from the mist nets. They were all banded and information taken down. The big surprise was a Yellow-breasted Chat that had shown up the week before in the nets. It was a lifer for several people in the group and I doubt anybody had got this close of a photograph before. Many of the birds were juveniles and Katie explained the markings/characteristics she used to determine their age. We think gulls are tough...try a songbird. Because it was breeding season we saw the brood patch and the cloacal protuberance on some of the birds. (or is that too much information!)
We then headed out to the mist nets which were pretty quiet except for a juvenile Anna's hummingbird which was released. When we returned we had a couple more Song Sparrows and a Northern Yellow Warbler, female second year! Other birds seen out and about were Cliff, Tree, Violet-Green and Barn Swallows, Northern Mockingbirds, Canada Geese and White-throated Swifts, Turkey Vultures and both a Nuttall's and a Hairy Woodpecker for a total of 32 species.
Do not disclose information that identifies the location of nesting birds of any species, to minimize stress on the nesting birds and the risk of vandalism or abuse.
