Drink Your Tea: Alma Ornithology : Day 2: Tongue Twisted Thrushes

Bird fact of the day: Some birds such as catbirds and robins have a hard, spade-like section of their tongue. This makes for a lot of tongues tangled in mist nets.

Today's banding at the forest loop of the ecological station involved a trampled net, thrushes and robins with caught tongues and woodpecker pecks.

One net had fallen but it didn't appear to be caused by a deer.

Krista and I began splitting off from Bishop today to check the nets on our own and increase efficiency. This also is allowing me more time to stop, take pictures of wildlife and run to catch up with Krista.

Hoverfly

Krista detangling a black-capped chickadee.

Jack in the pulpit.

We began photographing certain birds to contribute to Bishop's research on molting. We capture the tenth covert on all the thrushes and document any other feather oddities.

Bishop showing us how to conduct bird photo shoots with the help of a wood thrush.

Pewee

Acadian flycatcher

White-breasted nuthatch

Hairy woodpecker that pecked my hand a lot.

Bishop gave us our first lesson in putting the bands on the birds and determining the measurements performed on each bird. Krista held the bird and blew the feathers away from the stomach while we looked to determine sex and if there was any fat storage.