Quote:
Originally Posted by klmccallum
Oh Wow! How did you manage that? Did you get close up pictures? Is his o.k. with the banding? So is Mr. Pinky really a rare species of the finch family? That's pretty kewl!  |
Well, it
did take a little discussion before they decided for sure that Mr Pink was a leucistic purple finch.
So now I don't feel so stupid that it took me that long to decide what the heck he was!
He was fine as of this morning when I saw him back at the feeders...along with a bunch of grosbeaks. I was a little surprised that he
was banded--there were a lot of people milling about in the basement yard and he's usually a little shy around people. But he came to the feeders and flew into the nets despite the crowds.
We caught and banded 64 grosbeaks yesterday--no recaptures, and none of the ones we caught were banded elsewhere.
And there were more to be caught, but they don't band past about 11:30 a.m.. Have I mentioned recently that we have a
lot or rose-breasted grosbeaks?
If it's a dark pink and flamboyant enough, the hummers will like your fuschia. Even if they don't care to drink from the fuschia, the color will attract them. They really like impatiens, too--especially red ones. Impatiens has a large nectary for that size bloom and red is always an attractant for Todds.
We released 9 hummers from the nets yesterday, too (they aren't licensed to band them and they're so small I'd be scared to let them
). The hummingbirds were putting on a show about 30 feet from the patio where everyone was sitting, watching for birds to hit the nets. People were almost more impressed with the numbers of hummers than with the fact that we banded 116 birds in total...