Week 13: Grey Skies and Grey Cheeks

Rocky Point Bird Observatory’s 2026 Migration Monitoring program has come to an end and it is time for our final blog post of the year. The last week of the season saw the weather creep closer to the November rains, but the fall had surprises left in store for our team of staff and volunteers.

RPBO staff and volunteers passing the time between net runs (Rosa Munzer)

DND operations and continued predator precautions kept our nets closed at Rocky Point for the last week of the season meaning our totals at the end of last week are also our end-of-season totals. Rocky wrapped-up with 3405 new birds banded across 61 different species with an additional 541 recaps! Our busiest day of the season at Rocky came on September 24th with 123 new birds banded and 7 recaps processed. For those of you who have been out to the stations or have followed along with our blog posts it likely comes as no surprise that our most banded bird at Rocky this year was Puget Sound White-crowned Sparrow with a total of 333 banded! While we had hoped for a more typical final lap at Rocky we are grateful for another year of memories and for the countless hours of hard work from our volunteers to make it all happen. To hear about what the owl team got up to this week at Rocky check out the RPBO After Dark blog!

Banding carried on at Pedder Bay and the last week came with some real highlights. While the flow of migrants passing through the station slowed down our number of enthusiastic visitors certainly did not. On one of the last days of the season we had a visit from over 40 local school children who got to see bird banding and learn about local conservation first hand. It wound up being our busiest visitor day of the season and was a lovely way to wind down our season at Pedder. We hope to see many of you back out at Pedder next season. Whether it is your first visit or you have been coming out for years we are always excited to show people our work, talk about why birds matter, and what we can do to better protect them! An extra special thanks goes out to Paula McCormick, who coordinates our education and school programs, she was a huge help to the banding crew this year and we are immensely grateful for all she has done for us.

Bander Rebecca Reader-Lee and Bander-in-charge Carter Strope demonstrating songbird banding to visiting school children with the help of School Programs Coordinator Paula McCormick (Rosa Munzer)

The last day of the season brought one of the most surprising birds of season in the form of a Grey-cheeked Thrush, only the second banded in RPBO’s history and a first for Pedder Bay! This exciting capture was one of the last of the 140 birds banded in our last week, bringing Pedder to 2913 new birds banded on the season and 58 species banded! Much like Rocky, Pedder Bay’s busiest day of the season came in late September with 137 new birds and 12 recaps processed on the 26th! Fox Sparrow edged out the competition to finish the season as the most banded bird at Pedder with 280. Pedder finished the season with more recaps than Rocky with 789, one of the more exciting recaptures came right in the last week with a Spotted Towhee caught on October 12th that was originally banded as a hatch year in 2019, making him 7 years old! 

The second ever Grey-cheeked Thrush banded by Rocky Point Bird Observatory (Rebecca Reader-Lee)

All in all we banded a total of 6318 new birds this season and processed 1334 recaps between the two stations and none of it could have happened without our banding staff, many volunteers, and the support of our members and visitors. A full break down of the birds we banded this year can be found below. Thank you all for your support this year, if you want to stay up to date with RPBO throughout the non-banding season you can check us out at RPBO.org and see what we are up to or head over to our socials @rockypointbird for additional updates and highlights. See you all next July!