Hiya! Today was officially the last day of fall banding here at Chico Basin Ranch. I know; I'm sad too! Today we banded 47 new birds and *Hermit Thrush*es were the number one banded species with a total of 12 new birds. A *Green-tailed Towhee* made for a nice late season surprise as we thought that they had already moved through the area. The *Northern Saw-whet Owl* that had been calling the last two mornings was spotted at opening sitting on top of one of the banding poles near the exclosure. Or, possibly, it could have been a different one. Either way, they are definitely using this area, which is great!
We finished up the season having banded 57 species in total this fall and the 57th was a young *Marsh Wren* banded this morning. Since we started the station back in 2002, we've never banded a Marsh Wren in the fall and only once in the spring so that was pretty exciting!! We also banded our third *Sharp-shinned Hawk* of the season, to go along with the three *Cooper's Hawks* and the three *Northern Saw-whet Owls* this season. Oh and the one* Broad-winged Hawk*. Needless to say, it was a good season for raptor banding! The SSHA today was a young female and she had a bulging completely full crop, which was really neat to see. *Townsend's Solitaire*s were spotted foraging in the grove early in the afternoon as well as the usual juncos, Blue Jays, and Northern Flickers. I will write more in the next week or so regarding this season's totals and in comparison to last years as well as some trends and such that we noticed this season. Hope that everyone enjoys the rest of the fall, it looks like cool weather might finally be on its way this week. *Happy Birding!* Laura-Marie Koitsch Bird Bander- Chico Basin Ranch Bird Conservancy of the Rockies -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Colorado Birds" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to cobirds+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to cobirds@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/cobirds/3e144e33-2693-4ba5-b490-48ce33cef4cd%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
