Date: 9/22/26 5:00 pm From: Barbara Volkle <barb620...> Subject: [MASSBIRD] West Hill Banding Tues 32 captures
Thanks to Strickland Wheelock for this report.
Barbara Volkle Northborough,MA <barb620...>
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Date: Tue, 22 Sep 2026 22:03:37 +0000 (UTC) From: Strickland Wheelock <skwheelock...> Subject: West Hill Banding Tues 32 captures
Tues [9/22] banding at West Hill Dam started slow as the first 2 net runs produced 6 straight E Towhees with many other Towhees calling or near the nets - only Towhees on those 2 runs.
However, all changed quickly as we started the 3rd run by the field/sumac nets which were the 2 big producers last Sat when we caught approx. 40 birds in 2 runs just there. This time the short net had 14 birds and the long net had 6 more to extract. Here we had a nice combination of 3 E Palm Warblers, 1 Pine Warbler, 1 House Wren and 15 Chipping Sparrows. Last Sat we caught 15 Chipping Sp in those nets & in the end of today, we had a total of 20 making for 35 Chipping Sparrows banded & no recaptures.After one last run, we had an E Bluebird and a few more Chipping Sparrows for a total of 32 banded birds - no Catbirds included even though we heard them calling around us. Over Sat & today we caught 82 birds including only 2 Catbirds which normally is our most easily captured bird.Historically I was reminded that 1 fall day x-number of years back at West Hill Dam we captured 95 birds in one morning - that must have made for a long day of banding and one very tired team.
