Thursday, July 17, 2008

Roving teenage gangs


Sounds menacing huh? Except I'm talking about juncos rather than humans. After fledges become independent (the parents stop putting up with their begging) they bunch up with other juvenile juncos and rove around together in packs. We take advantage of this by setting up mist nets all over the study site to catch anyone we haven't already caught and get them banded. Mist nets are super fine nets that (if you set them up right) are very difficult to see and the birds will fly right into the net and slide down into a pocket and hang their like their in a hammock until we get there and extract them. Here's picture to illustrate. Our field assistant Amy is freeing one. You have to look close to see the net b/c it's so fine. We'll be doing this the rest of the season. Sometimes we catch a whole flock of 15-20 birds at once. Needless to say it's a busy time of year.