PANO Panola Mountain Banding Station

10/18/2026

Many of our Panola volunteers go down to our sister station, Jekyll island bird banding station (JIBS), for fall migration in October. It’s a neat opportunity to see birds we don’t catch at Panola. The pretty adult male Painted Buntings are always a hit but we’ve had a number of cool captures so far this season!

For more on JIBS, follow JIBS - Jekyll Island Banding Station! They just banded their 1,000th bird of the season the other day!

All birds handled with appropriate federal and state permits.

10/01/2026

Delayed post but we had a very diverse day on Saturday! 16 new birds, 3 recap (all COYE-Common Yellowthroat), and 1 unbanded (escaped COYE).
Other species: Western Palm Warbler, Yellow Warbler, Savannah Sparrow, Eastern Wood-pewee, Indigo Bunting, Eastern Phoebe, Eastern Bluebird, Carolina Wren, and Gray Catbird.
Photos: Palm Warbler, Eastern wood-pewee, Yellow Warbler, Velvet Ant

09/13/2026

We had to close pretty early due to rain yesterday so we were only able to get 4 birds: 2 common yellowthroats and 2 eastern phoebes. But on the plus side, it wasn’t as hot as it would normally be this time of year! Thanks to our volunteers who brave various weather elements year-round to help us get good data!
Photos:
Common yellowthroat
Greg keeping spirits high as he works to rack up more volunteer hours than his dad.
The aftermath of putting away gear in the rain: we have to dry it out afterwards!
Eastern Phoebe
Eastern Phoebe wing showing an unusual molt order: A2 (alula) is retained, A1 and A3 were replaced. Typically they would replace them in order.
All birds handled under appropriate federal and state permits.

08/29/2026

Whigg meadow is one of the most beautiful places and they get birds that are quite different than what we get at Panola! Consider signing up to volunteer for a few days in September! 😊

Please review the available slots below and click on the button to sign up. Please leave any notes that will help us understand your capabilities, this helps us balance the staffing at the station. Please take signing up seriously, if you are unable to attend for a day you have signed on, cancel you...

08/17/2026

Very hot and slow day yesterday, we only had 4 birds: two indigo buntings, one eastern phoebe, and one Ruby-throated hummingbird. But on the plus side, we had a couple of new people that we were able to spend a lot of time talking to about the banding process, we had a group of birders stop by, and we had plenty of time for a spirited discussion on aging hummingbirds! These are also some of the days we appreciate our regular volunteers most for braving the weather! Even the slow days contribute to robust long-term data!

All birds handled with appropriate federal and state permits.

Indigo bunting wing photo: this bird was aged as a hatch year, meaning it was born this year. In the new aging system, it’s aged as FCX, a first cycle auxiliary formative bird. All birds have juvenile and formative molts but only certain species have an auxiliary molt where they replace some feathers prior to their full formative molt.

08/02/2026

Banding summary for August 1: 6 new, 2 recaptures, 15 unbanded (all hummingbirds!)
Species today: Northern Mockingbird, Blue Grosbeak, Common Yellowthroat, Northern Cardinal, Eastern Phoebe, Ruby-throated hummingbird
All birds banded with appropriate federal and state permits.

I’m trying out the individual photo captions, so scroll through each photo to see the caption. The first photo is a male Common Yellowthroat that is at least 5 years old! We learned this from catching the bird multiple times. Otherwise, you can’t tell a 5 year old vs 10 year old songbird apart from looking at them.

Our hummingbirds all go unbanded because none of our ba**ers have the hummingbird-specific permit that is required, so when they fly into our nets, we extract them and release them. We’ve had so many hummingbirds over the last few sessions though that we’re starting to think we need to get someone with a hummingbird permit down here! We get them every summer but this summer, the numbers have been larger.

Adult female Northern Cardinal

Northern Cardinal wing. All adult birds go through what’s called a pre-basic molt every year (usually after breeding) where they slowly replace all their feathers. You can see in the secondary coverts here, the feathers in the top left, that the feathers are in sheath, meaning they are growing in and being replaced. Among the longest feathers on the bird, you’ll notice a couple shorter ones in the middle, those are also growing in.

Adult Northern Mockingbird who looks a bit rough because it’s also molting!

Northern Mockingbird wing, with new feathers growing in.

Blue Grosbeak

Allegheny Monkeyflower, a native plant to Georgia that’s also a host plant for some butterfly species such as the Common Buckeye.

07/26/2026

We got lucky with the weather yesterday! We had 14 new birds, 3 recaptures, and 8 unbanded (all hummingbirds which we aren’t able to band). Species included northern mockingbird, eastern wood pewee, song sparrow, northern cardinal, indigo bunting, eastern phoebe, blue grosbeak, Carolina wren, and common yellowthroat. We also found a black rat snake!

All birds handled with the appropriate federal and state permits.

Photos: blue grosbeak, eastern wood pewee, indigo bunting, Juliet and rat snake, northern mockingbird who needs to replace some feathers, ruby-throated hummingbird.

07/23/2026

Great report about our sister station, JIBS, on Jekyll Island! Panola and JIBS together make up the Georgia Bird Observatory. JIBS will be operating every day this October (starting Oct 4) if you want to visit!

Volunteer bird ba**er Ryan Davenport uses decades of community-collected data to uncover how migratory birds are changing with the world's climate.

07/21/2026

On Saturday we had 8 new birds, 5 recaptures, and 4 unbanded birds.

Species included Indigo Bunting, Northern Cardinal, Song Sparrow, Eastern Phoebe, and Downy Woodpecker. All banded with proper federal and state permits. All the unbanded were hummingbirds which require a separate permit to band.

Photos:
Northern Cardinal molting some head feathers
Indigo Bunting
Ruby-throated hummingbird
male Downy Woodpecker aged as a first cycle bird working on its formative molt.

The formative molt is the second molt in a bird’s life. Their first “molt” is when they grow all their feathers in at once on the nest. Because they are growing all the feathers in so quickly, the juvenile feathers are pretty poor quality, so a few months after leaving the nest, they will start molting into their formative plumage, molting a few feathers at a time, which are higher quality and will last longer.

07/04/2026

Heat and hatch year birds were yesterday’s banding themes! We had 10 new birds, 5 recaptures, 1 unbanded, and 3 eastern bluebird babies banded out of a nest box.

Photos:
1-this hatch year was still being fed by “mom” near one of our nets but mom was an indigo bunting and this is a brown-headed cowbird! Brown-headed cowbirds don’t build nests, they lay their eggs in the nests of other birds and let those parents raise their babies. While it’s a little unfair for the bunting, it’s a clever strategy for the cowbird and since cowbirds are native to Georgia, other bird populations are not threatened by the cowbirds. We banded the cowbird and put it back near its indigo bunting mom!
2-hatch year male common yellowthroat, growing in his face mask starting with black mustache
3-hatch year Carolina wren wing, you can see buffy tips on some covert feathers and the black bars on their wing line up very nicely, indicating all the feathers were grown in at the same time

The full species list included indigo bunting, common yellowthroat, Carolina wren, eastern phoebe, brown-headed cowbird, and ruby-throated hummingbird.

All birds handled under federal and state permits.