Many Birds of Many Feathers

The “best birds” that Terry Jenkins handled this year as a volunteer in a bird banding project on the Eastern Shore were two Connecticut warblers.

He took a male and a female out of the banding net at the same time. These handsome yellow and olive green birds have a distinct eye ring and are not often seen along the coast even in migration season.

Jenkins, a member of the Virginia Beach Audubon Society, has been volunteering this fall with the Coastal Virginia Wildlife Observatory to help with bird banding during the fall migration period. He has been traveling to the shore two or three times a week to help with the project.

Jenkins sent me a sent short video that tells the story of the bird banding that takes place at Kiptopeke State Park at the very tip of the Eastern Shore where migrating birds gather to wait for favorable winds to cross the Chesapeake Bay. See the link to the video below.

Jenkins also sent along this photo he had taken of a tiny brown creeper, one of the birds that he removed from the net where it had been captured. Jenkins does not actually band birds, but one of his jobs is to help untangle them from the netting.

More than 8,000 birds were banded this year, which was twice as many as were banded last year, he said.

“In one day we banded over 800 birds, mostly yellow-rumped warblers

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