A New Site, an Old Forest, and a Stream-side Beauty
by Samantha Bean
Wild Bird Research Group carried our banding gear into new territory, and it did not disappoint. When you climb a different mountain, you are going to get a different view. While there was not a mountain involved per se, the views were amazing this week.
On the sun-filled morning of June 14, 2026, Fiddler’s Creek was not on the agenda. Our new site, in the Stony Brook forest, was a trail through the woods meandering along a stream, with trees so big you wouldn’t be able to get your arms around them if you tried. We are no strangers to this location. We walk near these same woods in the fall for our owl banding operations. But for now, it was songbird territory. And while we banded fewer birds overall than last week, the species count was about the same, off by only two.
And those two species carry a lot of importance! They are also brand-new species that WBRG has not encountered before.
The banding crew quickly noticed new things. Namely, shade. The forest we were in was much older. The canopy closed in considerably. Our regular site at Fiddler’s Creek is a forest in its infancy. The Stony Brook forest, a different vibe entirely. Roots on the forest floor were larger than some of the diameters of the trees themselves in Fiddler’s Creek Preserve. And with older woods comes an entirely different habitat. When birds like Eastern towhees moved through the forest, we could hear them in the deep leaf litter before we could spot them. While we saw many familiar faces like gray catbirds, of which we banded 20, there were also some new faces. Birds that need this older growth forest for their desired habitat.
Over the course of the morning, the crew at WBRG banded 36 birds in total, representing 11 species of birds. And as the trail name suggests, the Stony Brook, is also home to a belted kingfisher. And she was beautiful and immediately coined Queen of the Stream! With the chestnut band across her chest, she brought much excitement with her as the banding crew took photos and measurements. Weighing in at nearly four times as much as a gray catbird, and a beak with razor sharp edges, it was certainly the moment of the day.
But the ladies’ day did not end there. Another female that we encountered for the first time was a hairy woodpecker. A lookalike to the smaller downy that we see quite a few of at Fiddler’s Creek, the hairy woodpecker prefers much older trees with larger diameters for foraging as well as for nesting.
The remainder of the morning was filled with many more female birds, including an American robin, a common yellowthroat, two tufted titmice, two blue jays, a wood thrush, and a brown-headed cowbird. Additionally, two male Northern cardinals were also included in our final numbers for the day.
Lastly, the common grackle is not a bird you would think of as a forest dweller. But due to the trails’ proximity to a golf course and the stream, we banded both a male and a female common grackle, both second-year birds.
Normally, at the conclusion of our banding sessions, we always talk numbers. Sometimes it’s the number of birds, and other times it’s something else. When we left the forest behind, and it wasn’t even noon, we had all surpassed our step goals for the day. Thirty-six birds, including two new species, were certainly worth the thousands of steps we accumulated.
HIGHLIGHTS FROM 6/14
- New to the Station: All of them!
- New to WBRG: BEKI, HAWO
- Total Birds Captured: 36
- Total Species Captured: 11
- New Banded Individuals: All New
- Recaptures: None
- Ruby-throated hummingbirds: 0
