Tuesday April 23, 2024: 42 new birds of 8 species, 19 recaps. New species: Common Grackle. Bird of the day was Ruby-crowned Kinglet with 30 new bands, followed by a tie between Brown Creeper and Common Grackle, each with 3 new bands.
Yesterday’s temps started at freezing, and today we ended at 17°C (63°F). Yesterday was calm and clear, and today was breezy and overcast. Things can change so quickly on the lakeshore! We were hoping that the southwest winds would blow in something new like a Pine Warbler or a Yellow-rumped Warbler, but it was all more of the same. Our bird numbers were up over yesterday, but we are still getting mostly kinglets with a smattering of other early spring (mostly brown) birds.
We caught singlets of a few interesting birds – another young male Sharp-shinned Hawk, a White-throated Sparrow, and a Common Grackle. There are always lots of grackles in the trees and at the end of the driveway early in the season, but we don’t catch them very often as they are a little large for our nets. Despite only banding a handful each year, we occasionally recapture birds that we’ve banded many years before . . . sometimes so long ago that the numbers on their band are disappearing!
We weren’t sure that the weather was going to cooperate today at all, so most of our Tuesday crew stayed home. Many thanks to our tiny crew – Gayle and Lyss – for keeping everything running smoothly!
–Andrea Patterson
Braddock Bay Bird Observatory 
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