WHIP-poor-WILL, WHIP-poor-WILL! The Eastern Whip-poor-will (EWPW) is often heard but very rarely seen, which is why it was so exciting to catch one in the nets a few mornings ago! Whip-poor-wills are pretty widespread throughout the eastern United States, but their nocturnal habits and highly camouflaged feathers mean that most people can go their whole lives without ever seeing one. It’s even unusual to see one at the banding station; although we open the nets before sunrise, we’re often just a little too late for the whip-poor-wills.
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Our EWPW was easily identifiable as a female because of the smaller, buffy spots in her outer rectrices. A male would have had large white patches on either side of the tail. In addition to sexing the bird, we were also able to use several plumage characteristics to determine that our bird was an after-second-year, or ASY. One of these diagnostic features is that the rectrices and outer primaries were very broad and truncate instead of narrow and pointy. Another clue is that the primary coverts and outer greater coverts had distinct brown spots with dark edging instead of buff tipping/edging that would indicate a younger bird.

EWPW are part of a family of birds known as nightjars, most of which are nocturnal, cryptic insectivores. One other relative, the Common Nighthawk, occurs in northwestern Ohio, but it can be quickly differentiated from EWPW by the presence of white wing patches that are very visible in flight. Like all nightjars, EWPW have large heads, rictal bristles (or “bristicles” as we like to call them), and very soft body plumage. They also have middle toes that are pectinate, meaning that they have little projections, like the teeth on a comb. These specialized toenails are used as grooming tools to brush feathers and rictal bristles. Another fun adaptation of EWPW is their deceptively tiny beaks. Because EWPW are strictly insectivorous, they don’t need very strong beaks. However, since they catch insects while flying, that dinky little beak opens up into a massive gape that allows them to easily gobble up fairly large bugs. ​

​Unfortunately, these fascinating birds are not nearly as numerous as they used to be. Habitat loss due to agriculture and urbanization and food source loss due to pesticides are major drivers of the population decline. Additionally, as a ground-nesting bird, EWPW are particularly vulnerable to predation, both from other wild animals and from outdoor cats and dogs. One easy thing that we can all do to help EWPW and other birds is to keep our cats inside. If you’d like to read more on the topic of cats or on what else you can do to support conservation, check out BSBO's Position of Feral and Free-ranging Cats and Easy Ways for YOU to Support Conservation. 

Text and photos by BSBO Passerine Research Technician, Yvonne Thoma-Patton

There are so many wonderful things about Northwest Ohio. The unpredictable weather is not exactly one of those great things. You may notice a day or two during the season - maybe even three - without a daily update from the Navarre Marsh Banding Station. The last few days of April and the first days in May were a mixed bag of warm, cold, snow, and wind, with on and off rain showers. 

Our station is required to adhere to USGS Bird Banding Laboratory permit guidelines (the federal administrators of the USA's banding program) and follow the North American Banding Council Banders Code of Ethics. The welfare of the birds should be the most important priority (USGS 2021). Banders should ensure the respect, safety, and welfare of birds and their populations, people, and the environment (NABC 2021). Strong wind, rain, snow, and extremely cold conditions prevent us from opening our station during foul weather. But while we may not process birds on inclement weather days, there are many other tasks we perform!  

One team member may administer a point count at sunrise, even if we aren't banding. The point count is an inventory of the number of birds both seen and heard from six specified points within the station. The observer counts and logs the number and species of birds within a designated area for a 5-minute period. This standardized data collection method is performed every day we band too and gives an idea as to what species are passing through the area that we may not catch (hawks, ducks, flocks of Blue Jays, etc.).

Other team members perform maintenance duties like trimming near pathways and mist net lanes without disturbing the habitat. We reset and replace mist nets, address trip hazards, maintain boardwalks, and perform many other tasks that ensure the safety of the birds, volunteers, and the environment. 

We also conduct weekly vegetation surveys. The survey involves repeated measurements of the same sample units, to assess changes in vegetation composition, structure, and condition over time. We look at vegetation density at our specified point count locations looking north, south, east, and west; using a ten-foot pole with black and white sections as the visibility index. We compare data weekly and yearly to figure out if climate change impacts foliage growth timing each season. Vegetation growth impedes our ability to observe birds both visibly and by sound, and therefore will have an impact on our point count surveys.

Although it may be hard to believe when looking at the weather right now…spring has sprung! We’ve been out in the marsh for a few weeks now, since the very beginning of April, and there’s been a fair amount going on already. We started off by doing some necessary maintenance, and we were very lucky to have some employees of the Toledo Museum of Art come out to help us for a day. They were real troopers and worked through a bit of rain before heading to the BSBO office to help organize some things for Biggest Week. It was very generous of them to donate their time to us, and they really proved that many hands make light work! ​

Our other big, pre-season chore was everybody’s favorite job: boardwalk repair. Luckily, we didn’t replace nearly as many boardwalks as we had to last year; in fact, we only replaced the middle portion of the boards at net 3. Since we’re highly-trained professionals, it only took a couple hours and was (relatively) painless.​

Staff started running the station on April 3rd, just to make sure we’d worked out the kinks, and volunteers started the following week. One of the most exciting things that has happened so far is that the banding station has entered the 21st century! We may not have electricity in the station, but we do have…drumroll, please…a TABLET!! This may not sound that exciting to the general public, but it’s been incredibly useful for us, so far. It has been programmed to be able to call upon data from the last few years, so, when we recapture a bird, we can get instant feedback as to when that bird was first banded. It’s a great self-check on our aging skills, so we can be sure that we’re aging birds correctly. The tablet will also save us time at the end of the year by making it so that we don’t have to enter all of our recapture data, and it solves a problem that we’ve always struggled with: reading our own handwriting.
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Speaking of recaptures, we've had some sensational return birds already this year! Return birds are recaptures that were first banded in a previous season or year, and they’re interesting because they’re able to give us longevity information for that species and document site fidelity (the tendency to return back to a specific site). Our first noteworthy return was a male Rusty Blackbird (RUBL), which is already pretty cool, since we don’t catch that many of them. RUBLs have been undergoing a population decline for a while now, but the marsh region seems to be a consistent stopover destination for them during spring and fall migration. This particular bird was banded at the station in 2017 as a second-year (SY) bird, meaning that he was hatched in 2016. This makes him almost seven years old, which is pretty impressive for a songbird (right?)! 

​Our next oldest return bird was a female Hairy Woodpecker (HAWO) that we identified as an after-third-year (ATY) bird. She was originally banded at the station as an SY in 2016, making her almost eight years old. Finally, most exciting of all was a bird that was actually captured by someone else! In the fall of 2015, at Navarre, a male Brewster’s Warbler (BRWA)(the common hybrid between Golden-winged and Blue-winged Warbler) that was aged as an after-hatch-year (AHY), meaning that he had been hatched either the previous year or in an even earlier year. We found out a few weeks ago that that very same bird had been caught in the summer of 2022 by a bander named David Toews during banding operations in Michigan, meaning that he’s at least eight years old (and maybe more)! With no longevity data available, this bird is quite possibly the oldest BRWA on record. 

All in all, we’ve had a busy season already, and we haven’t even hit the first wave of migration yet!

For more information on the Bird Banding Laboratory's (BBL) longevity records and how bird ages are calculated, please visit the BBL's website HERE.

Every season of banding is interesting in its own way. Some years it's really wet, some very hot. Sometimes the winds are perfect, and other times the wind just won't cooperate. And then some years particular species or families are prolific, and then other years all of migration is ho-hum. 

This was one of those falls where temperatures seemed to stay a bit warmer than usual and winds tended to be out of the south (probably explaining much of the warmer conditions). By the end of the season we ended up banding close to 5,000 birds, which is just above the long-term average for fall (4,780). But most of the action didn't occur until October once short-distance migrants began moving through the region. In fact, we didn't have a 100 bird day until September 27th (one of the latest years to go without a 100 bird day) with the rest of our 100 bird days occurring in October (we never did break a 200 bird day this fall). Owing to this slow start was the lack of long-distance migrants, particularly Blackpoll Warbler, Swainson's Thrush, Gray-cheeked Thrush, and many of the warblers. For many of these long-distance migrants, they weren't significantly below average (except maybe Blackpoll Warbler and Gray-cheeked Thrush), but on the whole, the below average numbers in many of these species made for a slow September. 

Of special note though were Black-throated Blue Warbler who set a new high record for fall and were 138% above the long-term average. If there had been just a few less Gray-cheeked Thrush, Black-throated Blue Warbler would have cracked the top ten species banded for the first time ever. What led to this influx of Black-throated Blues when nearly all the other long-distance warblers were below average is so interesting to ponder. Was this a regional influx or range-wide? How will this carry over into spring next year? Will we see a dip next year?

As alluded to earlier, much of this season's numbers came during October (over half of all this fall's birds were banded in October). Leading the way in October were White-throated Sparrow, Golden-crowned and Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Myrtle Warbler, and Hermit Thrush. Unlike other years, we never really saw a big push of these short-distance migrants on a particular day. In many years, we will get close to 100 (or more) kinglets on a given a day, or White-throated Sparrows, and then they'll peter out after this. Instead, throughout October we would have consistent days of a couple dozen or more of these species. Rather than big pushes, we experienced a steady stream of these short-distance migrants throughout October, leading to many of them being above average.

Total Birds Banded: 4,846 (1% above average)
Species Banded: 90
Banding Days: 72
Banding Hours: 321.61
Number of Volunteers: 38

Species with New High Records:
American Woodcock - 14
Broad-winged Hawk - 1
Northern Saw-whet Owl - 2
Black-billed Cuckoo - 2
Slate-colored Junco - 81
Black-throated Blue Warbler - 112
White-breasted Nuthatch - 7
American Robin - 219
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Top Ten Species Banded with % Difference from 1990-2021 Average (green above, red below):
White-throated Sparrow - 572   67%
Swainson's Thrush - 392                 19%
Golden-crowned Kinglet - 380   49%
Blackpoll Warbler - 374                  33%
Gray Catbird - 323                             11%
Myrtle Warbler - 319                        9%
Hermit Thrush - 273                          50%
Ruby-crowned Kinglet - 260         28%
American Robin - 219                       217%
Gray-cheeked Thrush - 123           31%

For more numbers throughout the season, head over to the 2022 Fall Daily Banding Totals on our Passerine Research Page.

​We would like to thank our incredible, dedicated group of volunteers and seasonal techs that put all their effort into ensuring a successful banding operation; for both data quality and bird safety. We couldn't do it without all your support!!!

We would also like to thank the amazing crew at Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge for their continued support of this project (both in research and housing for techs) and Davis–Besse Nuclear Power Station and Energy Harbor for preserving and allowing access to this incredible habitat.

If you would like to support BSBO's research efforts, please consider our Sponsor a Mist Net program, which directly contributes to our banding programs. Learn more and Sponsor a Mist Net here.

With the spring migration banding season now behind us, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on this past season and share some of the preliminary numbers with you. Every spring banding season is a monumental task, but this was our first spring back in full operation since 2019, and we would not have been able to resume this important research without the help and support of numerous individuals and organizations.

We would like to thank our dedicated group of volunteers and seasonal techs that put all their effort into ensuring a successful banding operation; for both data quality and bird safety. We couldn't do it without all your support! We would also like to thank Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge for their continued support of this project (both in research and housing for techs) and Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station and FirstEnergy Corp. for preserving and allowing access to this incredible habitat.

If you would like to support BSBO's research efforts, please consider our Sponsor a Mist Net program, which directly contributes to our banding programs: www.bsbo.org/sponsor-a-mist-net

Spring Recap: Navarre Marsh Banding Station
Banding Days: 46
Species Banded: 100
Number of Birds Banded: 6,212

Species with Record Highs:
Black-billed Cuckoo - 9
Rusty Blackbird - 21
American Tree Sparrow - 48
Brown Thrasher - 24

Top Ten Species Banded:
Magnolia Warbler - 440
Myrtle Warbler - 425
Gray Catbird - 381
Traill's Flycatcher - 337
White-throated Sparrow - 322
Yellow Warbler - 266
American Redstart - 237
Common Yellowthroat - 207
Swainson's Thrush - 159
Red-winged Blackbird - 143

Other detected birds were tagged by BSBO in conjunction with a project being investigated by Powdermill Avian Research Center of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pennsylvania. This project is studying the survival and behavior of birds following window collisions. BSBO is the control group, tagging normal, wild-caught individuals. Species tagged by BSBO this fall included Ovenbird, White-throated Sparrow, and Gray Catbird. Following their tagging and release, many of these birds remained in the marsh for 1-4 days before departing. The sole catbird tagged this fall remained at Navarre from October 11 to 14 until it was detected again on October 18 in North Carolina, south of Asheville; a four-day journey of about 440 miles (as the crow/catbird flies). 

In addition to our own birds tagged this fall, on the night of September 28, an Eastern Whip-poor-will was picked up by our Navarre tower - our first non-BSBO tagged bird detection. This whip-poor-will was originally tagged by Elora Grahame of the University of Guelph in Ontario in August 2021, east of Lake Huron as an ASY (after-second-year, an adult hatched in 2019 or earlier) male. Elora is a Ph.D. candidate focusing on factors affecting migration rate, timing, routes, and stopover duration for Common Nighthawks and Eastern Whip-poor-wills. Elora was generous enough to provide further details about this detected bird and send over photos of him. You can follow Elora and her nightjar updates on Twitter @elora_grahame. ​

​Following his tagging in August, this whip-poor-will was detected by towers in southern Ontario by the end of September. Passing outside of Kitchner, London, and St. Clair National Wildlife Area, he would last be detected in Ontario on September 28 on the Point Pelee peninsula before being detected southwest across Lake Erie at our Navarre tower in Ohio. This detection not only exemplifies the collaborative power that the Motus network offers, but also showcases a migration route between Ontario and Ohio and a direct flight over the waters of Lake Erie.

After passing by the Navarre tower, this Eastern Whip-poor-will would not be detected again until October 16 outside of Galveston, Texas on the Gulf Coast. Towers become less prevalent south of this point and are absent from much of the Gulf Coast area of Mexico. So we (and Elora) may not find out where this bird eventually settles for the winter. But we’re both hopeful for his return through our region and to his breeding territory in 2022.

With one year of this new technology under our belts we’re excited for what the upcoming year will bring (without technical difficulties!). The Navarre tower will run throughout the winter and plans are in the works to install our second tower south of the lakeshore before spring. The BSBO research department will also be a part of a much larger nanotagging collaboration this upcoming spring migration, so check back soon for future updates!   

Our sincere thanks to all those who so generously supported this invaluable research. ​

​BSBO breeding bird field work returned to normal in 2021. While the MAPS station was run at Oak Openings in 2020 under strict safety precautions the BSBO station reopened for the first time in two years as water levels returned to lower levels along the lake shore. The summer work did not disappoint as each site held nice surprises and a wealth of information for the long-term datasets. 

Oak Openings completed its 30th year at the Ostrich Lane site and tallied 174 new birds of 31 species and 35 returns from previous years. Over the seven field dates a total of 26.9 new birds/100 net hours were recorded and 36.1 total birds/100 net hours. Highlights included returning Yellow-breasted Chats (2) and captures of Hooded Warbler, White-eyed Vireo, Blue-winged Warbler, Lark Sparrow, and Red-headed Woodpecker. An exceptional return was made by a Field Sparrow that was originally banded in July 2013, representing a minimum age of 8 years this summer.

The BSBO station has been closed due to high water for the past two years so represented almost a new start to field work. This highly productive area nestled in behind the BSBO headquarters building captured 249 new birds of 28 species and 20 returns from previous years. New bird bandings represented 67 new birds/100 net hours and 82.3 total birds/100 net hours in the seven field days. Highlights included Yellow-breasted Chat, American Woodcock, Sharp-shinned Hawk, Eastern Screech-Owl, Yellow-billed Cuckoo, and a late migrating Mourning Warbler. A large number of staging American Robins were encountered on the last field day.

​After photographing this Yellow-billed Cuckoo (YBCU) for nearly half an hour, I was flabbergasted when I pulled up the photos on my computer and realized this bird was BANDED! In over 200 photos of this bird, the band showed for only a brief few seconds during the photoshoot owing to short legs and a cuckoo’s propensity for lounging low on a branch. While we’ll almost certainly never be able to read the band number well enough to determine which individual bird this is, the most likely explanation is that this is a locally-breeding, adult YBCU banded by BSBO in a previous year.  

There are a few pieces of information that help us reach this conclusion. First, we know that BSBO did not band this bird in 2020, since we haven’t banded any YBCU this year, so if this bird was banded by us, it didn’t happen this year. Second, when we look closely at the band, we can see that the edges have been worn smooth and round, a phenomenon that only happens after (typically) years of wear on a band. This bird was definitely not banded any time recently.  

So we’re left with two explanations. Option a.) this bird was banded by BSBO in a previous year, or b.) this bird was banded by another bander/banding station in a previous year. In order to parse those options a bit further we need to consider recapture likelihood. “Foreign recapture,” a bird recaptured in a location away from its original banding site, is an occurrence that happens very infrequently in bird banding. A much more frequent occurrence is encountering a “return” bird, one that has been recaptured at the original banding location, but in a season other than that in which it was originally banded. Just considering this likelihood alone, the chance of this bird being a BSBO return is much higher than the chance this is a foreign recapture from another station.  

One final piece of natural history information helps us even further in our thought investigation. Many species of birds, including YBCU, show some site-fidelity to the breeding grounds, meaning they will return to the same general area year after year to breed, particularly if they have been successful in mating and raising young there. YBCU is a regular breeding bird in the Navarre Marsh and their “kowlp” calls echo through the June beach ridge forests each day once they make their return.   

While we may never be able to say for sure who this individual is or how old they are, one thing is for certain, the beach ridge habitat in Navarre Marsh is important breeding and stopover habitat for many tens of thousands of birds annually, plus one happy cuckoo.  

Don't forget to follow BSBO on Facebook where you can stay up-to-date with our daily point counts and join us every Wednesday (about a half hour after sunrise) for Morning Marsh Moments when we go live during our point counts and give a glimpse into BSBO's research station. 

​Typically at the end of the breeding season, our final MAPS update post would occur on the last day of field operations, and contain just that day's banding numbers. But we figured Hey! let's do a MAPS compilation this year like we would with migration.

It was another great summer in the Oaks - even with the challenges of living in a socially distanced world - with a few surprise captures and a few questions to dig further into. Conditions were fair throughout the season and the summer heat never seemed to settle in quite as much as other years.

Presented below are this summer's initial numbers (having gone through one stage of vetting so far) and impressions from the season.   

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​Highlights: Red-headed Woodpecker, Scarlet Tanager, White-eyed Vireo, Yellow-breasted Chat, Mourning Dove, Blue-winged Warbler, and Chipping Sparrow. 

Although numbers are still initial and have yet to be compared to previous years, this summer felt a little slow and delayed. Numerous causes could have contributed to this feeling including spring weather, habitat management choices, vegetation density and maturity, and just plain 'ol wrong place wrong time; but the timing of peak activity felt to be off by about a week or so. Final analyzed numbers should shed more light on this.

But while it may have felt "slow," one species that had an incredible summer was the Yellow-breasted Chat (YBCH). Northern Ohio sits at pretty much the northern extent YBCH's breeding range, resulting in relatively few encounters during migration and summer. Typically, we hope to catch 1 YBCH during banding operations in Oaks, but they appeared to have made quite the eruption this summer with numerous reports throughout the Oak Openings region. 8 being banded this summer exemplifies this surge as this is the highest number we've banded in a single season and represents 31% of the total YBCH that have been banded at the station since 1993 (26 in total from 1993-2020).

*Typically we only provide the number of recaptures (a bird banded or encountered within season) in our updates, but we've decided to also include for this compilation the number of returns (birds banded in previous seasons). Among other things, returns can shed light on the number of adult birds returning to a habitat to breed, demonstrate the strength of site fidelity exhibited by a species, and help reveal the longevity of species from numerous years of encounters.        

For more info on BSBO's research at Oak Openings and the MAPS program, click here.

To learn how you can help BSBO's research team and how to adopt a mist net, click here.

Thank you to Metroparks Toledo for their support in our research of the birds of Oak Openings and their drive to implement wise and scientifically-based management practices for all wildlife. 

And THANK YOU to the volunteers that helped us succeed in this project!!! This year, more so than ever, their willingness to help during summer conditions, while also adhering to covid restrictions and best practices, made for safe operations for both people and birds. We would not have been able to do this without them. Again, Thank You!

The MAPS program, developed by The Institute for Bird Populations is a continent-wide collaborative effort to assist the conservation of birds and their habitats through demographic and standardized monitoring.

Following an incredibly wet spring, a combination of summer heat and intense pumping brought water levels in the marsh to more “normal” conditions. However, despite beautiful fall weather, migrant numbers through the marsh were noticeably low, at about 20% below the seasonal average.

Accounting for some of this discrepancy were our major-movement neotropical migrants – specifically Blackpoll, Myrtle, and Magnolia Warbler – which (from initial reports) may have been pushed farther east this fall. While these were the most notable lows, other major-movement migrants including Hermit Thrush, White-throated Sparrow, and Golden and Ruby-crowned Kinglet were also low, but not far from average. A possible explanation for these latter migrants (which are short-distance migrants) could be the prolonged warmth during October and the delayed leaf drop, extending their migration beyond our banding season.

While overall numbers may have been lackluster, there were multiple species that were well represented this season. For the second fall in a row, Prothonotary Warbler set a new high record, with 36 banded, shattering last year’s 26 and going way beyond the average of 8. As a whole, thrushes had a good year (particularly Gray-cheeked Thrush) as did Gray Catbird. Wrens also were well above average (including the seldom caught Marsh Wren) with Carolina showing some recovery after last winter’s harsh conditions. Flycatchers were exceptional as well this fall, with Eastern Wood-Pewee and Olive-sided Flycatcher setting new high records (26 and 2 respectively).

Although numbers were mostly low this fall, it is only one season and does not necessarily represent any particular trend. Seasons such as this only stress the importance of long-term monitoring, set protocols, and region-wide collaborations such as the Midwest Migration Network.

We would like to thank our dedicated corps of volunteers and seasonal techs that put all their effort into ensuring a successful banding operation; for both data quality and bird safety. We couldn't do it without all your support!
We would also like to thank Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge for their continued support of this project (both in research and housing for techs) and Davis–Besse Nuclear Power Station and FirstEnergy for preserving and allowing access to this incredible habitat.