By Gary Lee
The killing frost of 24 degrees we had on Saturday morning (5/23) did in some ferns, tree leaves, strawberries, blueberries and fruits of flowering shrubs and trees.
This isn’t good for the animals and birds that will be looking for food later in the year.
Then, down in Texas and Oklahoma they are getting epic rains.
In some places they have had 18 inches in less than a week with another seven inches expected today (5/24).
The Blanco River in Texas’ Hayes County rose 33 feet in three hours and nine feet in 15 minutes today.
One rescue fireman lost his life trying to rescue some people in the flooding.
One year they are dry and having brush fires and then the next year they are having flooding.
The oil spill of over 100,000 gallons on the California coast has covered over 10 miles of coastline so far and is still on the move.
They said that not so many birds and animals were affected, and those that were got washed and released.
Those birds that were cleaned off may have looked pretty good when released but they may have ingested some oil while trying to clean themselves.
These birds will not make it too long after their release… you can clean the outside, but not the inside.
The Crown Point Banding Station wrapped up its 40th year of operation today.
When I left on Thursday we had banded over 650 birds of 57 species in two weeks of operation.
In addition, we saw and heard 117 more in that area, so we don’t catch them all.
The last night I was there a woodcock was performing his mating flights at dusk.
It was landing in one of the net lanes so I put that net back up.
The bird landed right near me a couple times but I didn’t have a fish net to catch it.
On his last flight he came right down on the ground beside the net and did one call before walking into the net.
I went right over but the bird wasn’t caught and flew up in my face.
I didn’t hear it again until about four in the morning and he was right in back of my tent.
I went back to sleep leaving him to his romancing.
During the two weeks we had several recaptures from previous years.
One male Baltimore oriole was 10 years old. We know him as Old 77, in reference to the last two numbers on his band.
The female he was chasing was eight years old.
We ended up catching him four times while he was trying to defend his territory and chasing other males, which we also caught.
Other recaptures were a song sparrow, a couple gray catbirds and a couple other Baltimore orioles.
Some of these were student birds that had been released by visiting school children in previous years.
They will receive a certificate that their bird had returned to the site.
This year we added several more student birds as we had children and young adults from Whitehall, Bolton, Keene Schools and Paul Smith’s College.
In the group from Keene there were 39 students.
We didn’t catch many birds that day so I think there were only seven or eight students that got to release one.
A total of over 300 visitors came to the banding station this year.
The second Saturday we were open Mike Peterson, who started banding there 40 years ago, was on site.
Many former friends and neighbors visited the site that day to see him.
He enjoyed every bird we caught and he and his family had supper with us that night. Over 50 people were on site that day and about 30 the next.
Bird catching had slowed down by that time and I think we only got about 30 birds each day.
According to master bander Gordon Howard and helper Tom Barber they were like one-armed paper hangers the first few days of the banding operation.
They said there were mant times they had to take down the nets to process birds and then put them back up and catch more.
I asked what the best bird was during the two weeks. Gordon mentioned a few: the Brewster’s warbler, blue gray gnatcatcher, a dozen Cape May warblers in the net at the same time and the old Baltimore oriole.
He said if they had more help they could have caught and banded twice as many birds that first week.
He said the trees were full of warblers feeding on the little green worms in the Hawthorns all around the nets for about four days.
We had several pickers and recorders the second week while the students were there, which always helps.
Thanks to all of them: Wendy, Malinda, Stacey, Mary and their families. We’ll get them next year.
Tom and I got over one morning and photographed the baby foxes that were denned in the French Fort area.
There were five babies to begin with but we only saw two.
We knew one had been killed in the highway which wasn’t that far away.
Hummers at Stillwater… but that’s another story. See ya.