For the last 8 years, I have been conducting research on migratory birds in west central Florida. I have just created a new organization called “Florida Avian Conservation”. News to follow soon.
If you would like to be kept up to date on its development, please let me know by e-mail at: FLAvianConserveNews@gmail.com
I appreciate your interest in our important, future bird conservation work!
Although it did not happen at either Dunedin Hammock or Caladesi Island, I thought those of you following this blog might find this of interest. After birding for over 40 years and banding for about 15 years, this was the first time in a long time when I was a bit stumped. I was banding at the school I work at in Lutz this spring when this very thing happened. I was walking up to our canopy net with a group of students when we saw 2 fairly decent sized birds in the net about 4 feet apart. Both the birds had fairly large bills (for songbirds) and were making a fair bit of noise. We gently lowered the net down so that I could reach the birds to extract them. The first bird I removed from the net was a female Summer Tanager. The other bird was a bit of a puzzle. During the extraction, I was examining the bird and noticed the distinct wing bars. Also, it was the same size and shape as the summer tanager with a similar bill. My initial thought was, “I have no idea what this bird is!” This provided a great teaching opportunity for my students.
When we got back to the banding station we looked very closely at all the field marks, took a lot of photographs and studied the options in the bird field guides. In the end, we decided that it was a female Western Tanager. This species shows up periodically during the winter in Florida. I had never seen one in Florida and the ones I have seen out west were all breeding males. Just to be sure, I Face-timed my friend and fellow bander, Jason Guerard, with the Black Swamp Bird Observatory up in NE Ohio. Thanks to smartphones, I was able to show Jason and two other Master banders in his office the bird. They agreed that it was a female Western Tanager and we settled on an age of SY (second year). Needless to say, this was probably one of the most exciting birds that I have ever captured while mist netting. It goes to show how critical this type of research is to increasing our understanding of migratory birds.
