The first week of December has come to a close and I have managed to find a handful of lingering species. The weather continues to slowly grow colder as winter settles in but so far no big snow storms or bitter cold air. I have primarily spent my available days off from work looking for late warblers and found two species to start off the last month of the year including a Yellow rumped Warbler on the 4th and a very late Common Yellowthroat on the 6th. I'm a bit ahead of a typical December in Hampshire County with a total of 76 species so far. Beyond the warblers I have a had a few other notable species for the month including a Killdeer, multiple Black Vultures and Turkey Vultures, a Marsh Wren (in the same area as the Common Yellowthroat and a fearless White tailed Deer), a Gray Catbird, a White crowned Sparrow, Red Crossbills and a Pine Siskin.
I have now put up some of my feeders for the winter as well as some from a PhD student who is conducting research in the yard for a second winter. As part of his initial study he came by and banded a few target species back in 2021 (more on that the following posts: banding June 2021 and banding July 2021). I continue to see banded Black capped Chickadees everyday and I spent a little time at the feeders this afternoon and found at least half a dozen banded individuals. All but one I was able to determine the background on with all of those banded during the two banding events in 2021. A final individual I could not figure out. It had a single light blue looking band on the left leg and unknown bands on the right...it was certainly missing some bands as nothing matched my database of banded birds. The band may be a faded purple band but not certain. I will be keeping my eyes out for the bird returning and hopefully I will get a look at the band(s) on the right leg.
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