[cobirds] Re: Boulder goodies, including Lapland Longspurs

According to the USGS site:

http://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/bbl/homepage/swan.cfm

this is why the collar is U856 and not 958n:

Tundra Swan

• gray, black or blue collars
• gray collars used on wintering birds in the Atlantic Flyway
• black collars used on migration routes
• blue collars used in the arctic on or near the breeding grounds
• 4 character combinations with the letter first (LNNN) - or -
• 3 character combinations with two letters (LLN, LNL, NLL)

So if there are 4 digits on the collar, it's letter-first followed by 3 numbers. Hope that helps!

Nancy Rynes

Lafayette, CO

On Friday, November 30, 2012 10:12:01 AM UTC-7, ted wrote:

Hello, Birders.

Andrew and I had an errand to run this morning, Friday, Nov. 30th, so we stopped by Sombrero Marsh, Boulder County, where the 8 Tundra Swans were still present. As Christian Nunes has noted, one of the bird wears yellow-on-blue neck-band #U856. Learn more about the Tundra Swan banding program here: http://tinyurl.com/SwanNeckBands

Andrew wondered why the band wasn't 958n, and I think that's a good question.

Next we headed over to the Legion Park overlook, where our goal was to count more than 2^9 American Coots, and, ideally, to achieve a prime-number count. We succeeded on the former front, but not on the latter. 

And we had a pleasant surprise at Legion Park: two Lapland Longspurs calling and circling low over the overlook. They briefly put down in the shrubby, spiny stuff just east of the overlook, then kept on going. One showed a fair bit of dark below, and was colorful overall, so I guess that makes it an adult male; the other may also have been an adult male, but I wasn't sure.

Ted Floyd

tedfl...@hotmail.com

Lafayette, BOULDER County, Colorado

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Colorado Birds" group.
To post to this group, send email to cobirds@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to cobirds+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/cobirds/-/XPm1bimEbt0J.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.