An immature male Rubythroat met an untimely end at the southwest alcove of the NRC today. The ants were upon him, so I left him in place to see how long he lasts.
Monthly Archives: August 2012
30 August 2012 – no casualties
29 August 2012 – no casualties
Painted Bunting feathers no longer in evidence, so I’m calling today as the last that the carcass was in evidence. That was 12 days.
28 August 2012 – no casualties
27 August 2012 – no casualties; bunting scavenged
No sign of a Mourning Warbler around the building today. The Painted Bunting has been scavenged, but its primaries remain so it is still readily detectable.
26 August 2012 – no casualties; trapped warbler remains
Painted Bunting still in place; trapped warbler still trapped, assuming it’s the same bird as yesterday. I had another brief glimpse today and it still looks like a small greenish warbler with long, yellow undertail coverts. I’m sticking with “Mourning.”
25 August 2012 – no casualties; trapped warbler
Today, the Painted Bunting remains in place but the Ruby-throated Hummingbird carcass is fully gone. It lasted approximately 5 days.
At the north entrance, I flushed a small, olive-green warbler with noticeably long and yellow undertail coverts. The bird bumped the glass near me, but I was able to steer it away from the building and into some ornamental trees. I was unsuccessful at relocating it after that. My best guess is that the bird is a Mourning Warbler, given size, coloration, and the long undertail coverts. The spatial distribution of collisions now looks like this:
24 August 2012 – no casualties, but hummingbird re-scavenged
Both bunting and hummingbird remain in their approximate positions from yesterday, but the hummingbird has now been scavenged again. At this point, only the tail and undertail coverts remain.
23 August 2012 – no casualties
The bunting and hummingbird remain in the same corner of the northwest alcove, but they are now about 1.5 m apart.
22 August 2012 – no casualties
Hummingbird and Painted Bunting still there, but someone has moved the hummingbird so that it is now on top of the Painted Bunting.
21 August 2012 – Nashville Warbler and Ruby-throated Hummingbird
I found a very fresh Nashville Warbler (HY female; fat = 2) at the north entrance and a Ruby-throated Hummingbird (HY male) just a few feet from the Painted Bunting carcass. The ants had gotten to the hummingbird, so I decided to leave it in place to see how long it lasts. Here is the warbler:
Here’s the spatial distribution of casualties thusfar:
20 August 2012 – no casualties
Painted Bunting carcass still in place.
19 August 2012 – Painted Bunting
I found a fairly degraded immature Painted Bunting today. It looks like the ants and beetles have taken their toll, and also that it was in place prior to the rain Friday night and into Saturday. I will conservatively estimate its date of collision as Friday, 17 August 2012.
As a new fall migration begins to heat up, I’m entering into my 4th year of monitoring at the Noble Research Center. This year, I will record the approximate location on the building of all casualties and trapped birds, beginning today:
12 August 2012 – no casualties
10 August 2012 – no casualties
9 August 2012 – no casualties
8 August 2012 – no casualties
7 August 2012 – no casualties
6 August 2012 – no casualties
5 August 2012 – no casualties
3 August 2012 – no casualties
2 August 2012 – no casualties
1 August 2012 – Big Brown Bat
This is actually the second time I’ve found a Big Brown Bat (Eptisicus fuscus) at the NRC, but this is the first dead one. How a bat hits a building, I don’t know.
Bird-Window Collisions at OK State 