I just came in from sitting in the blind. It appears that after this session, most of the chickadees have now been banded...or at least most of those nesting close enough to the feeders to be visiting frequently. A total of 12 have been banded and in winter we were counting maybe 18 between two winter groups. The majority of chickadees I saw today were banded.
The grosbeaks were a different story. The first one I saw had a band. The rest of them (at least 3 dozen) were
not banded!
No wonder we're going through so much seed! We may have 200+ grosbeaks out there!
None of the goldfinches I saw today had a band, which doesn't surprise me. Between the two sessions, we've only banded 29 goldfinches and we've had as many as 300 at the feeders during winter.
The only purple finch I saw today that was banded was Mr Pink, who is looking in fine fettle.
We've banded 17 purple finches total, but there were at least another 5 hanging out at the feeders today that were unbanded.
And I saw 3 male and 1 female indigo bunting today, all unbanded. So we have at least 8 in the area (we banded 4 on Tuesday).
So now I have to tell Augie that he missed a few...
