Spring Bird Banding at PSU’s Big Hollow

This past Monday was the opening day of bird banding for the spring season, in an area of the PSU Arboretum that we call Big Hollow.  High winds speeds on Monday meant that we could only open a few of the nets and we only managed to capture one bird – a Tufted Titmouse. Today we had much better luck. Wind speeds were still a bit high, but we managed to captured 12 birds, representing 8 species. Today’s highlight was a stunning ‘Red’ Fox Sparrow, the first of this species to be banded in Big Hollow. Below are a few photos I took today.

Tufted Titmouse - this adult bird was our first banded bird of the season! (Photo by Alex Lamoreaux)

Blue Jay - banded on 3/29/12 (Photo by Alex Lamoreaux)

Fox Sparrow - banded on 3/29/12 (Photo by Alex Lamoreaux)

Alex holding the Fox Sparrow (Photo by Drew Weber)