A new banding season!

The 2010 raptor banding season starts tomorrow!! I'll be in a new blind this season, at least for me it's new. In Jan of this year I received my master permit to band raptors so I'll be using my own bands and reporting them to the BBL(Bird Banding Lab.).
The research tech for the season is Jordan Jones.
I've been at the blind the last couple days to watch the flight lines of the hawks. So far, I'e seen several coops, sharpies, a kestrel, harrier, and several merlins. We've seen a few merlins pluck swallows out of the air, too awesome!!
Dragonfly on a lure line.

i've been very busy

I've been busy with Cape May Raptor Banding Project this month. I haven't had time to post, i'll try to post a bit more frequently.

A Sharpie and a Few Merlins

A sharpie on it's back.


The cost of handling falcons.

Today there were not many hawks flying, a few kestrels, couple sharpies, and afew merlins.
We caught 1 sharpie and 3 merlins. I think tomorrow will be better and Monday should be great.

The One That Almost Got Away

This is one of the red-tails from last week. It seem like it took 20 minutes to get this bird in the can.

Maintance Day at the Blind

Today's weather was predicted to be 80% rain.
On my way to the Point on the bus and the walk form the drop off stop to the blind it was spitting. I opened the station for about an hour and a half then it started to rain.
Mandy, Sam, and I went to a horse barn to catch sparrows for the project, we caught 12. Rainy,drizzly weather is a good time to get sparrows, they stay in the barn. After that we went back to the blind and decided to cut the grass around the station. The grass was getting a bit long, a couple of the traps were hard to see. We didn't catch any birds today.

Best Day Yet in the Blind

Today we caught 14 raptors. This is our best day yet.
The species were Kestrel, Merlin, Sharp-shinned, Copper, and Red-tailed.
Total for the project are on Cape May Raptor Banding Project website - http://capemayraptors.org/

Mamdy caught her first merlin today in the mist net, a nice HY(Hatch Year) female. W got our first adult red-tail, SY(second Year). This red-tail had a very light tail, some white on the outer part of the tail and near the base. Mandy took a few photos of it.
I'm off to bed, 4:45am comes early.

Cape May Coyote!!!

Today at 11am, while Mandy and I were sitting in the blind wishing that a raptor would fly near enough to catch Mandy spotted a really cool animal - a coyote!!! I thought that all the Cape May coyotes had been removed from the island. It's nice that there is still one left.