End of the Season

The end of the raptor banding season came over the weekend. We closed the last station a day early due to the threat of rain – rain that did materialize. Over the course of the season, banders recorded 2,155 raptors. Of that total, I probably handled around 500 of them in the course of retrieving hawks from nets and doing public demos. The season totals are on the project's weekly updates page. In the course of the season, I learned how to capture raptors, how to handle them (mostly without getting footed), and how to process and band them. I am hoping to learn songbirds as well in the near future.

My season in Cape May has come to an end as well. During the three months I spent at the Cape, I saw 173, including nine life birds. My stay there was extremely productive from a birding perspective, even though I had very little time to explore the Cape's hotspots.

Normal blogging will resume slowly this week. In particular, I hope to restart the Loose Feathers series this Friday.