A Day of (Unsuccessful) Playbacks

Today we tried playing our recording of the towhee song in a few different places to see if we would get a response. Some places were chosen because we had seen unbanded males there and we wanted to see if they were in the area today and if they would respond to the playback before we bothered setting up nets. We tried this in D3 and F2 because I had seen unbanded males there before, but today we received no response to the playback. In X4 we went ahead and set up the net because we saw an unbanded male singing there today. He responded to the playback by doing the wing-raise display, but he did not seem upset enough to make more than one pass at the net, so we did not catch him.

We tried the playback in V7 because we wanted another chance to look at GA?O’s bands. GA?O responded, and it seems as though he really is missing that one band. I will look at our records and see if there are any other banded towhees besides GAGO with GA on the left leg and O on the right leg.

We tried the playback along the trail in J7 just for the heck of it, but we didn’t get a response.

In M2 GABR (male) and GORA (male) were flying around and chasing each other. GORA chased GABR back toward the tennis center, and GORA stayed on the north side of the trail.