Week 2 - Second week, and a week of seconds

After a pretty exciting first week of the season, the birds slowed down a bit during week two, although not nearly as much as expected. Relatively heavy nocturnal movements (seen on radar) were mirrored by some relatively busy days at the stations. Only the 31st at Pedder and the 3rd at Rocky dipped below 20 new banded birds (the latter due to rain), compared with half of our days in the last few years dipping below this threshold for the second week of monitoring!

Sunrise at Rocky Point (Rebecca Golat)

Pedder led the way in hummingbirds banded this week (five of each species), and also had our first Northern Flicker (a juvenile male intergrade) and Hammond's Flycatcher banded for the season. White-crowned Sparrows (26), Pacific-slope Flycatchers (18), Wilson's Warblers (17) and Spotted Towhees (15) topped the charts for the week in terms of number banded, while American Robins and Swainson's Thrushes also put in a good showing. The oldest bird of the week award goes to a Swainson's Thrush that was originally banded here in August 2014 as a hatch-year, making it six years old! The runner-up was a female "Puget Sound" White-crowned Sparrow banded in August 2017 as an after hatch-year, making her at least four years old. The major highlight, however, was an Olive-sided Flycatcher that Rebecca banded on the 1st - a second banding record for Pedder, just a few days after the first.

Intergrade Northern Flicker (Emma Radziul)

Rocky had our first Pacific Wren of the season, but the nets there were dominated by Pacific-slope Flycatchers (74) and Wilson's Warblers (53). Only two other species broke double-digits for the week: MacGillivray's Warbler with 14 and American Goldfinch with 13! Perhaps unsurprisingly, based on this stat, daily diversity in the nets was lower than at Pedder. August 3rd was also our first day impacted by rain - with only a little over half of the possible net hours realized, it is no surprise we struggled to hit the 20-bird mark. On the recapture front, we had two birds that were originally banded there in 2018: a White-crowned Sparrow and a Purple Finch, both banded as hatch-years making them two years old now. The highlight of the week was our first rarity of the season in the nets - a Gray Catbird! I initially heard it on census on the 1st, but it successfully avoided our nets until the next morning when Rebecca was the lucky bander to get it. This is the first record for fall migration monitoring at RPBO - one was banded in 2006 during a spring banding session here, making it the second overall. It is also likely that it has been around for a while - a few of us have been hearing a strange call from the net 4 area for a few days now (this catbird seems to not be making typical mew calls, rather a raspy call that sounds a bit like a strangled Towhee). 

Gray Catbird (Rebecca Golat)

On obs this week, some 'new for the season' birds included a Ring-billed Gull at Pedder, while Rocky hogged all the shorebirds, adding Surfbird, Baird's Sandpiper and Short-billed Dowitcher along with decent numbers of peeps. The highlight was a Yellow-billed Loon that drifted by Rocky on the 29th - quite an unusual sighting for summer here and likely a first record for RPBO during migration monitoring (two other records for Rocky in Dec 1999 and Nov 2003 outside of the monitoring window, and at least two have been seen during seawatch from East Sooke Park).

One old Swainson's Thrush! (Rebecca Golat)

Non-avian observations of the week were topped by a nice encounter with the resident wolf pack, with four individuals in the front bay at low tide just after net opening on the 1st and several instances of howling were heard from the back meadow. The local Sea Otter was spotted a few times over the week, off Edye Point and at the front. A neat spider with a freshly-hatched egg sac and loads of babies on its back was hanging out by net 10 at Pedder one day (more below).

One of five new 'easter eggs' to find while out on net runs - you'll have to find the other four yourself! (David Bell)

In other news, a mysterious elf left some decorations around our net runs, bringing a splash of colour and inspiration to an otherwise mostly brown landscape. Our MAPS season at Witty's Lagoon came to an end, finishing with 299 new bands and 84 recaptures (just couldn't get one more, eh Jannaca?). Seawatch this week was rather foggy, but the crew on Friday managed a decent number of gulls and murres. For those on iNaturalist, a project has been created to capture all of the sightings at our Pedder Bay station - see how many observations you've submitted here: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/rpbo-pedder-bay, and feel free to click 'join'!

Not a bird! Add your observations to iNaturalist to have them count toward the Pedder Bay collection project (David Bell)

Pedder Bay	Jul 28th	29th	30th	31st	Aug 1st	2nd	3rd	Total
Banded	38	23	36	17	45	28	29	216
Species banded	17	12	17	10	19	15	15	31
Recap	4	3	6	5	7	3	12	40
Species recap	3	3	4	3	5	3	6	14

Rocky Point	Jul 28th	29th	30th	31st	Aug 1st	2nd	3rd	Total
Banded	35	44	43	43	23	23	16	227
Species banded	12	14	17	12	6	9	8	26
Recap	6	4	2	13	6	2	4	37
Species recap	4	2	1	9	5	2	3	11

Week 2 stats - click to enlarge