We've begun getting a steady trickle of juvenile Saw-whets, 19 have been banded over the last seven days. The above photo shows an adult on the left, and a juvenile on the right. As they did last summer, the adult captures dropped off soon after we began seeing active flight feather molt. An adult caught last night was in active molt, replacing the flight feathers on its wings and growing in a new tail (photo below).
The juveniles are also in active molt. They are molting out of the juvenile plumage that they wear for a very short time of their lives. You can see the first few adult breast feathers coming in on the left side of the photo below.
We catch a few bats during the summer. Considering how many are around right now we're glad that we're not catching more. The Red Bat pictured below was caught a few nights ago. They are a beautiful bat. It was pointed out to me that I had incorrectly labeled this as a Hoary Bat.
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