Lake Champlain trip nets two new birds for veteran bander It’s Mother’s Day evening and I finished banding a couple hats of Yellow Rumped Warblers and one Magnolia Warbler just as it got dark.

We had some great birds come through the banding area this week. It was a little wet a couple of days, but we kept the nets up and the birds kept hitting them. If it’s rainy, we use umbrellas when we check nets.

That way we can keep ourselves and the birds fairly dry when we get them out of the net.

So far we have banded over 400 birds with a species count of forty-nine. We got three new species just today.

Our first bird this morning was an Eastern Kingbird which was followed by a Savannah Sparrow.

Then we caught several Least Flycatchers—a total of twelve for the day— and a new bird, a very yellow Wood Pewee.

We caught two Wilson’s Warblers, one male and one female. These were not new birds, however, as we caught a male Wilson’s yesterday.

We caught another new bird, a Veery, and later in the day caught another one.We also caught several Lincoln Sparrows and finished off the day with all those Rumps just as it got dark.

Students from Whitehall School came by to observe bird banding on Wednesday.

It turned out to be a poor day for catching birds, however we did have a few birds to show them and had a couple to band.

A batch of Rumps hit the nets earlier that morning, but we could not hold them until the students arrived.

There were two frosty mornings which made the grass and tents white. The wet nets from the day before were a little stiff to put up that morning.

The nets go up between 5 and 5:30 a.m. and come down around 7:30 p.m., depending on birds seen in the area.

We are running eighteen nets in five locations in the thorn apple thickets. The birds come into the area to stock up on food for their trip further north.

They pass through our nets going out to the point of land on cold Lake Champlain.

The birds don’t want to fly over the chilly lake so they travel along the shoreline. Then we have two chances to catch them in our nets.

On Thursday some in our group heard the singing of a Cape May Warbler, but it didn’t sound as if it was close enough to catch.

The best bird of the week came late on Friday, just after catching two new species—a Downy Woodpecker and a Cardinal.

The Woodpecker was just out of the nest as it had no tail feathers.

I took it back down the net lane to release it close to where it was caught as I believe it was still being fed by its mother.

On the way back I picked up a small warbler which I had never seen before.

We perused all the identification books we had on-hand and determined it to be a female Cerulean Warbler—a life bird for me.

It was the first time this bird had ever been seen at Crown Point in 37 years of banding. Great bird!

Saturday also turned out to be a great day. We were catching birds as soon as we got the nets up and it went on like that most of the day.

Just before noon we caught the first Wilson’s Warbler, a pretty male which I took a couple photos of.

Mike Peterson, who started the banding station all those years ago, has had some health issues the last three years but he was able to come to the station that day.

While he was there we caught some birds he banded four and five years ago and he was able to let them go again.

It was nice to have Mike there, if only for the day. He was spotting birds flying over the field, and while watching the net lane he was first to holler, “Bird in the net!” It was just like old times.

Late in the afternoon a bird was taken from the north net and brought back to the banding table.

The little warbler was carefully examined and found to have an orange crown.

So what was it, boys and girls?

An Orange Crowned Warbler—yet another life bird for me. It’s a bird that had been caught previously at Crown Point, but not while I was present.

So, life goes on in the bird world. And now as these little birds make their way north to their nesting grounds, they are wearing a band.

I’m here one more week with a family of Foxes not far away, but that’s another story. See ya.