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The Manomet Banders

Female Cape May Warbler.

This week we ended with 53 new birds banded and 61 recaptures processed. This brings out total new birds banded up to 335 and recaptures to 266. We caught 6 new species this week including Black-throated Blue Warbler, Prairie Warbler, Veery, Brown Thrasher, Wilson’s Warbler and a bird only caught twice in the last ten fall seasons, a Cape May Warbler!

On Tuesday the banders participated in the September iNaturalist Mini-Bio Blitz on the property. We saw 109 different species total, with 31 insect species and six species of amphibian including a Pickerel frog which was the first record for the property. Wednesday was very humid and when the sun came out, very hot. Throughout the day we’d hear Gray Tree frogs and Spring Peepers calling. Back in the spring, Gray Tree frogs would call explosively from the bogs, at times loud enough that your ears would hurt. We’ve seen the result of their successful breeding this fall, seemingly almost every leaf you look at has a small green lump of a young Gray Tree frog camped out on it. This could be due to the wetter than average spring we experienced, keeping the water level in the bogs at capacity and creating a breeding oasis for them along with other amphibian species.