April 18th a new one day record for marsh

yellow shafted flicker  the males conveniently have a nice mustache to help us identify gender 

The J trap has been working better then i had ever dreamed so again a big thanks to Rachelle and Sylvain plante. On Tuesday after telling Chris about how many tree sparrows we had  over easter  he had the chance to join us back at the  marsh for a day of banding and we started wondering if we would be able to potentially catch 200 birds . After our first net check and our first trip to the j trap it was evident that we had a chance .. So it ws with Myself , Chris Sukha , Ethan Quinton and Stephanie Allaire  that we approached a record setting day with poise and dignity and a lot of birds finding the net

Stephanie Allaire  continuing her extraction training 

To make a long story short we managed to catch 259 birds surpassing a single day of banding record of 220. However with the new  J trap i think we are going to see new records for many seed eating birds . This will of course need to be taken into account whenver we compare this year with past data even when we compare oit to the old jay trap which never had this kind of success

This bird believe it or not is called a purple finch notice it is oozing purple throughout all of its feathers. Someday someone will explain the  history of this name I am pretty certain it is about a colour blind ornithologist 

Our summary of the days banding totals are as follows 259 birds

236 american tree sparrows
14 slate colored junco
14 red winged black birds
2 common redpoll
1 purple finch
1 common grackle
1 yellow shafted flicker  aka northern flicker

Today April 19th when the rain stopped Chris was back at it  while I was conducting interviews for the marsh intern position. On his own and mostly using the j trap Chris managed to band
the following


90 american tree sparrows
10 slate coloured junco's
2 red winged black birds
2 common grackles
1 common redpoll

for a total of 105 birds  well done Chris !!  364 birds in 2 days and 326 american tree sparrows!! It would have been a slow couple of days without the sparrows.

A reminder that the banding season officially starts may 1st these days are used for training and getting the station up and running which it seems to be doing on all cylinders.