a typical day at "the office"

Sorry for the slow-down in posting.  Fall banding season is quite busy for me, with lots to do beginning way too early in the morning.  Here's a little look at what I do...over, and over, and over again on banding days.

No photo for step one, which is opening nets in the dim pre-dawn light.  Mist nets look a little like badminton nets, made of very fine nylon or polyester, constructed in baggy panels.  When stretched between two poles, they are hard to see and birds fly into them and fall into the pockets.

My banders and I fetch the birds from the nets every half hour or so.  This Indigo Bunting is typical of most songbirds, which tend to just lay calmly in the net pockets.

Each bird is placed in an individual cloth bag which we tote back to the banding lab and hang up under our work bench.  These colorful bags have been made from some pretty fancy old bedsheets, often by mothers of banders past!
.

Bird bands are made of aluminum, and stamped, in North America, with a unique nine-digit number. These bands are assigned to licensed banders who hold a federal permit under the U.S. Dept. of the Interior or the Canadian Wildlife Service. They come in an array of sizes. They are lightweight, slide freely, and don't impede the bird in any way. Here is an aluminum band on a Wood Thrush; the other leg is banded with two plastic color bands which help identify the bird easily in the field.  For several years I did a special study that involved observing Wood Thrushes.  Color banding requires a special permit.

Next, a series of measurements and notes are taken. One standard measurement is the length of the unflattened wing in millimeters ("wing chord"). In many species of songbirds in which sexes have identical plumage, males have longer wings than females.  Since we try to determine the gender as well as age for every bird banded, this can be very useful.  It can also be used in body condition indices.  Here, a young (and therefore tan-crowned) White-crowned Sparrow gets a wing chord measurement. 

We also look at breeding condition; whether a bird is molting, and the extent of molt; how much fat the bird is carrying; we use various techniques, mostly plumage characteristics, to determine age and gender if possible; and we note any ectoparasites, unusual plumage, or other abnormalities.  Finally, we weigh the bird by placing it in a plastic cone which is laid on a digital scale. This Great Crested Flycatcher weighed 38.1 grams. 

The data is entered into a computer (but is not always supervised by brilliant male Scarlet Tanagers), and the bird is released. The whole process takes perhaps two to four minutes per bird, so with more than one skilled person working, there is a flurry of activity, then a short wait to return to the nets to do it all over again.

At the end of our morning, we roll the nets up so nothing gets caught in them.  Then if I have the time and energy, I work on the many computer and office related tasks all this field work generates.

This is a pretty simplified version of bird banding. I may have prompted more questions than I answered, and I could write many pages about what is learned from banding in general, and my projects specifically.  To satisfy your curiosity, here are some further resources:

• U.S. Bird Banding Lab -- administers the program in the U.S. Lots of info here, be sure to bookmark "How to report a bird band in North America" for future reference!
• A PDF from the Banding Lab on the first 100 years of bird banding in North America.
• Ontario Bird Banding Association -- a fine organization that I think may have originated the Bird Bander's Code of Ethics which I hang on our wall and include in all the new bander information packages.
• Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship (MAPS) -- an excellent project utilizing banding in the breeding season, which has spawned a similar program for wintering birds in the tropics (MoSI).
• Lists of bird observatories in North America, Britain and Ireland (they call it "ringing" over there), and other European countries.
  

Comments

[Rurality]

Thanks for the virtual banding session! We always enjoy watching the banding at Ft Morgan (Alabama) but probably won't make it down there again anytime soon.

[Aydin]

Do you remove the ectoparasites? Or would you consider that interfering with nature?

[Nuthatch]

Mostly they are extremely tiny feather mites, which would be impossible to remove without fumigation anyway; or hippobosid flies, which fly off when disturbed. If the bird has a big tick around an eye and I can get it off safely I do it, otherwise, birds leave pretty much as they come, with the addition of a bracelet.

[Anna]

Fascinating! I've been lurking for a while and only just decided to comment. ;)

It's great seeing those gorgeous foreign birds, makes me long to visit the US, even though I probably couldn't tell a grackle from a pine grosbeak from a white-wing dove.

[Nuthatch]

Welcome, Anna! I look forward to the day when I visit the UK, where I hope one of the ringers I've corresponded with might let me lend a hand with one of your nuthatches!

[Mike]

Very cool, Nuthatch. This is as close as I've ever gotten to bird banding. Love the pics.