img

The Manomet Banders

Yellow-billed Cuckoo.

This week we seemed to boomerang between seasonal fall temperatures and a return to summer’s heat and humidity. On warm days, Spring Peepers, Gray Treefrogs, Black-capped Chickadees, and Song Sparrows sang their spring songs since the current day length matched up with the similar day length in the spring when they first begin calling. We banded 104 new birds this week and processed 56 recaptures. This brings our season totals up to 560 new birds banded and 446 recaptures processed. Our new species for the week included Sharp-shinned Hawk, Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Swainson’s Thrush, and Magnolia Warbler, bringing our fall species total up to 51.

It was a busy week for us with four visiting groups spread across Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Between Deb Harrison’s Nobles Academy class, Steve Maguire’s two Scituate High School Ornithology classes, and the Children’s Study Home, approximately 80 students were at Manomet this week! All the classes were lucky to have great weather and were enthused to see birds like Blue Jays up close.