Banding Marsh Sparrows

My Bird Rambles are spontaneous.  Before I meet my group , I look at the marshes and watch for birds.  This tells me where to go and what to show my guests.  So when I saw Tim Keyes and the crew preparing to band marsh sparrow, I knew what my group was going to see that day.  We got to the crew as they were taking the birds out of the nets.  So, I stood back and told my group to looking into the marsh.  The tide was super high so all the normally secretive sparrows were right up so we could watch wild sparrows moving around.  It was what makes birding an "in the moment" event.  We were there watching sharp-tailed sparrows.

Here is a picture of the crew taking birds out of the nets.Tim Keyes on the left and Charlie Muise on the right are working quickly and smoothly banding sparrows.

Here is a Nelson's Sparrow.  This bird is a target species for this on going marsh sparrow study here in Georgia.

Here is Charlie talking to my "Ramblers" about the Seaside Sparrow.

Priscilla is preparing to release a Seaside Sparrow under the direction of Todd. 

Lourdes not only learned that there were birds in the marsh called Seaside Sparrow, she got to release one. What a great morning!

 

Sparrows, shorebirds and a few ducks

Sparrows, shorebirds and a few ducks those were the targets for Monday’s birding. Hallie Mason had emailed me back in November that she was coming to Jekyll to bird, bike and golf. Jekyll was a perfect fit. We emailed back and forth so when she show up it was like meeting a long lost friend. Our first goal was to find the marsh sparrows. Oh my, those marsh sparrows can be secretive. We did have the tide in our favor so we went first thing to Andrew’s Island Causeway. We drove down the very muddy road and parked. A Western Palm Warbler was our greeting committee. We just walked a just a little when we spotted movement. The first bird was a Nelson’s Sparrow while we were looking at that bird another bird popped up. Another sparrow flew across and landed on another blade of grass. It was a Salt-marsh Sparrow then another one popped up in between the two. It was a Seaside Sparrow. You could see that the Seaside was a larger sparrow. What a show! I could not believe my eyes. These beautiful little sparrows were up. They were looking around. We were not in mud in fact our feet were dry. How often does that happen?
Well the whole morning continued in that kind of unbelievable luck. We had a neat little Piping Plover on East Beach on St. Simons Island. There were two eiders on Sea Island. Both eiders were males and one was the white and black adult male. Ok now that was good birding.

Sorry It was such a great morning of seeing some wonderful birds, I forgot about my camera. But here is Hallie at the amphitheater.