San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory - Notes from the Station

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Yellow Warbler

6/22/2021

Species: Yellow Warbler
Most recent capture date: 5/23/21
Sex: Female
Age: at least one year old

Notes: This Yellow Warbler had a brood patch, indicating that she's breeding. That's quite exciting: Yellow Warblers were a target species when strips of riparian habitat at CCFS were restored from pear orchard in 1987 and 1993, but we haven't seen them breeding here, just passing through on migration. A breeding population here would be a long-delayed but lovely success.

Song Sparrow

6/19/2021

Species: Song Sparrow
Most recent capture date: 5/29/2021
Earliest capture date: 5/9/2020
Sex: Female
Age: at least 2 years old

Western Tanager

6/17/2021

Species: Western Tanager
Most recent capture date: 5/7/21
Sex: Male
Age: slightly less than 1 year old

Notes: Sometimes you watch a bird dart about in the trees and think, "Please fly into the net… please…" - and then sometimes a bird shows up in the net that you didn't even know was in the area. This Western Tanager was a gilded, fiery surprise when he turned up at one of our satellite banding sites.

Red-winged Blackbird

6/16/2021

Species: Red-winged Blackbird
Most recent capture date: 5/23/21
Sex: female
Age: about 1 year old

Notes: A very unusual species for us to catch! This year Red-winged Blackbirds have been at CCFS in numbers that we haven't seen in at least a decade. This young female had a brood patch, a physical trait that indicates she was breeding. Maybe we will get young Red-winged Blackbirds in a few months!

Lesser Goldfinch

5/31/2021

Species: Lesser Goldfinch
Most recent capture date: 5/4/2021
Age: at least 2 years old
Sex: Male

Notes: I'm always surprised by how short the legs of a Lesser Goldfinch are - the goldfinch is proportioned like a woodpecker, with stubby thick legs. In this photo you can see the white patch on the wing quite well; the length of that patch helps us determine the bird's sex and age.

Warbling Vireo

5/28/2021

Species: Warbling Vireo
Most recent capture date: 5/4/2021
Age: at least 2 years old

Bullock's Oriole

5/25/2021

Species: Bullock's Oriole
Most recent capture date: 5/2/21
Earliest capture date: 4/17/19
Sex: Male
Age: at least 4 years old

Lazuli Bunting

5/21/2021

Species: Lazuli Bunting
Most recent capture date: 5/2/21
Sex: Male
Age: at least 2 years old

Notes: This species is somewhat unusual for us, and a flashy older male like this is a real treat. His blue feather color comes, not from pigment, but from the structure of the feathers themselves, similar to the iridescence in a hummingbird's gorget.

MacGillivray's Warbler

5/17/2021

Species: MacGillivray's Warbler
Most recent capture date: 4/20/21
Sex: Male

Notes: This species is a one-bird-per-year level of rarity for us, showing up in our nets only in spring or fall as it migrates through the Bay Area. Maybe some MAPS banding station up north will catch this fellow in the summer as they survey breeding birds!

Orange-crowned Warbler

5/11/2021

Species: Orange-crowned Warbler
Most recent capture date: 3/17/21
Earliest capture date: 9/19/12
Sex: Female
Age: at least 9 and 3/4 years old

Notes: Look at that age–this little bird is a venerable survivor! In fact, she's older than the national Bird Banding Lab's listed record for the oldest known individual of her species. Time to update that record...

About

You never know who you'll catch when you're bird banding! We wanted to share that sense of surprise, so we'll be posting here some of the birds we catch in the course of our research. Some birds will be here because they are unusual in some way; others just because they took a nice photo.

Authors

We are biologists who study landbirds in the south San Francisco Bay Area through bird banding at Coyote Creek Field Station. We have extensive training (and official permits) for our bird handling, and we prioritize bird safety over all else.

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