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Missing Blackbirds Found




You know all those blackbirds that were missing from so many 
Carolinas Christmas Bird Counts this year? I found them. They came to 
celebrate the winter's first snowfall at Hilton Pond Center for 
Piedmont Natural History near York SC.

While everybody else has been reporting Purple Finches, Pine Siskins, 
Red-breasted Nuthatches, and other northern migrants, I was overrun 
today by voracious Common Grackles and their kin.

The good news is that I managed to trap 108 of those grackles today, 
which made for lots of bites and scratches--to say nothing of the 
noise! The number of captures is significant, because not since 1984 
have I banded more than 100 grackles in a whole calendar year. (Back 
then, the property was much more open and probably more attractive to 
various blackbirds.)

What was especially exciting was that mixed in with the grackles were 
Red-winged Blackbirds and Rusty Blackbirds, of which I trapped three 
each. Over the past 20 years of banding, I'd captured just 17 
red-wings, but the rusties were a prize since only one had ever been 
banded locally.

Photos will appear in a future edition of "This Week at Hilton Pond."

After a sub-par banding year in 2001, it looks like 2002 is off to a 
grand start!


With best wishes,

BILL
-- 

BILL HILTON JR., "The Piedmont Naturalist"
Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History
1432 DeVinney Road, York, South Carolina 29745 USA
hilton@hiltonpond.org, (803) 684-5852, eFax: (503) 218-0845

Please visit our web sites at http://www.hiltonpond.org and
http://www.rubythroat.org

"Never trust a person too lazy to get up for sunrise or too busy to
watch the sunset."					BHjr.