Anna's Hummingbird

We caught three Anna's Hummingbirds in the nets. Normally you don't even catch hummingbirds because they don't usually perch in the types of habitats where our nets are. First we had a female caught in the nets. When we tried to get her out of the net, she flew out. Luckily though, she came back and brought two males back with her. They all happened to fly in to the net. The unfortunate thing is that we were not allowed to band them because their legs are two small for our bands.

Anna's Hummingbird

California Quail

Orange-crowned Warbler

Orange-crowned Warbler

Orange-crowned Warbler

Ruby-crowned Kinglet

Ruby-crowned Kinglet

Golden-crowned Sparrow

Banding 3/24/2010

Yesterday was one of my first banding excursions where I actually had quite a big part in the goings on. I was involved in; net runs, net extractions, scribing and releasing, all things that I have been involved in before, but never in such depth. We caught 15 individual birds of 6 species.

These are the totals for each species:

Orange-crowned Warbler (4)
Ruby-crowned Kinglet (3)
Anna’s Hummingbird (3)
Spotted Towhee (3)
California Quail (1)
Bushtit (1)
Golden crowned Sparrow (1)

I have included a sequence of photos of the process of catching the birds and then “processing” them. First, the Orange-crowned Warbler flies into and gets caught in the net, second, we “extract” the bird (take it out of the net, this takes an extremely gentle touch), and lastly, the bird is extracted and brought back to the banding and processing station where it is measured, weighed, examined, and banded.