Week 5: An Arrival of Phoebes

18-24 August 2025

   Sunrise at Rocky Point (photo: Andrew Jacobs)

                    

With another week at Pedder Bay and Rocky Point, migration is heating up with new migrants coming in! Migrating from Colorado our new bander Megan has arrived for the rest of the season.

Seemingly, this week, many migrants began to move into the area, as well as fledglings of seabirds starting to make an appearance. Black-throated Grey Warblers started to show up at both stations along with other new migrants, such as the grey-headed Orange-crowned Warblers, Lincoln's Sparrows, a Golden-crowned Kinglet and our first Northern Saw-whet Owl of the season! The first cycle juvenile birds aren't done yet, with a few very young birds that haven't begun going into formative plumage being seen at the stations.

Banding

This week the team at Pedder Bay processed 171 new birds and 52 recaptures.

The top 5 most banded species for this week there were:

• White-crowned Sparrow (Puget Sound) - 36
• Swainson's Thrush - 21
• Common Yellowthroat - 14
• Wilson's Warbler  -13
• Spotted Towhee - 9
• MacGillivray's Warbler - 9

The Townsend's Warblers are starting to be on the move with this one visiting our station this week (photo: Andrew Jacobs)

This week saw the arrival of the grey-headed Orange-crowned Warblers coming in as migrants, in addition to our breeding population of more extensively yellow lutescens Orange-crowned Warblers. (photo: Andrew Jacobs)

Hutton's Vireo; one of the few birds that seems bigger in the hand than in the field (photo: Andrew Jacobs)

Season-to-date banding totals from Pedder Bay

This week the team at Rocky Point new processed 301 new birds and 73 recaptures.

The top 5 most banded species for this week there were:

• American Goldfinch - 46
• Common Yellowthroat - 33
• Wilson's Warbler - 33
• White-crowned Sparrow (Puget Sound) - 30
• Western Flycatcher - 29

Black-throated Grey Warbler: one of the first of the season and it's always nice to see our logo bird visit the stations (photo: Andrew Jacobs)

                    The first Northern Saw-whet Owl: ahead of schedule, showing up before the owl season starts to remind people to be ready to sign up for the owl monitoring project (photo: Max Hellicar)

Season-to-date banding totals from Rocky Point (not sure who skipped ahead to 34th August!)

In the field

Rarities included two Black-type Phoebes (potentially Black x Eastern Phoebe hybrids) and six Sabine's Gulls at Rocky Point. Large numbers of newly fledged Glaucous-winged Gulls and Olympic Gulls (Glaucous-winged x Western Gull hybrids) have begun to disperse into our two monitoring sites and can be seen trailing their parents while learning how to be a gull. These young gulls can stay with their family until around next season's nesting. Our Red-tailed Hawk at Pedder Bay continues to overlook the estuary, looking for fish and often begging, but is now seen less with the Bald Eagles. Common Murre families can be now heard calling from the water more often. Swallow numbers have been quite good for banding this week, catching a few at the start of the week and now it appears that they are starting to move through, with a number of many species seeming to disperse out of the area. 

Black-type Phoebe at Rocky Point: initially there was one seen briefly at the dock, then on the next day there were two phoebes spotted on census (photo: Andrew Jacobs)

                  

Two Barred Owls have been lurking around net 5 at Rocky Point and, so far, avoiding capture! (photo: Andrew Jacobs)

Flycatchers like this Western Flycatcher are currently moving through the area, with numbers fluctuating greatly between censuses each day. (photo: Andrew Jacobs)

Northern Red-legged Frogs can be heard in the mornings on most days (photo: Andrew Jacobs)

Finally, as always, it's good to have the banding team in shape and ready for any activities to come! We had a volleyball and gymnastics session after banding one of the days this week.