July 7 - Bird Banding

4:30 wake-up. One hour earlier than usual. Bird-banding day. Quick breakfast, pack lunches, wrestle into our wading boots, then a return to JACK to meet the bird banding team.

Throughout our visits to the nest sites, we have come across the well-worn banding paths, and been told to watch out for the ropes staked into the ground. Now we would see this in action.

Jenny McCabe, the Field Team Leader for the Bird Banding Project, met us at the site. We followed her to several banding nets -- a 20' long stretch of mist net staked throughout the research site designed to capture songbirds. The nets are so fine, we had to be warned not to walk into them ourselves. Mist nets are used to capture songbirds so that they can be banded and studied.


A bird band is a small ring of aluminum placed around a bird's right leg with a unique ID for the bird (like a social security number). Researchers also take data on the size and health of the bird. Once banded, the bird is then released.

The banding team places the nets once every ten days in the same locations, so that local songbirds can be tracked over time as to longevity, health, and behavior. Nets remain for 6 hours and are checked every 30 minutes.

The banding team works fast. Our first capture was a robin. Jenny demonstrated the banding grip (a way to hold the bird safely but securely) and placed it in a cotton bag to carry back to the bird-banding station. Our captured robin was surprisingly still in its cotton bag.

The next net yielded a yellow warbler. Here, Dominique demonstrates the banding process.
This bird was released immediately after being banded (without taking relevant data), as it was showing signs of stress.

We made the next round of net visits in smaller groups so as to release the birds more quickly. We captured a robin (who fluttered periodically in the bag on the walk back) and a song sparrow, the subject of Jenny's research.


Jenny took a variety of measurements on the song sparrow, including weight, wing span, beak length and thickness, tarsus length, length of primary feather and length of tail feather.





View of the song sparrow's brood patch -- the underside that a female uses to warm her eggs.