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Banding Birds a part of Spring Migration

Mark Faherty

Identifying and tracking birds is important during the Spring Migration.   Mark Faherty has more in this week's Bird Report.

It’s hard to avoid the subject of migrating birds this time of year. Even a casual observer can notice a pair of towhees that weren’t there yesterday suddenly scratching around under their feeders, or hear that first catbird of the spring mewing in their shrubs. Out on the beaches, you might have noticed the first Common and Roseate Terns arriving in the last few days, back from their winter waters off Brazil and Africa. Birds are literally arriving overnight, with more showing up every day. You might figure that scientists know a lot about how and where these birds migrate, about the physiological adaptations that allow them to complete their long flights, or even just about how long they live. And you’d be right. But most people may not know how we know what we know about bird migration. The answer in most cases is bird banding, and it’s probably happening somewhere near you. 

While researchers have banded almost every kind of bird using innumerable trapping methods - everything from baited traps to giant nets shot from cannons - the most common type of bird banding is mist netting. Mist netting involves catching mostly songbirds in nets that look like volleyball nets made of a spider-web fine thread. Trained researchers extract the birds, and each receives a uniquely coded aluminum band on one leg. Banders collect data on age, sex, weight, and body condition of all birds before releasing them. We are especially interested in the amount of fat, which indicates migratory readiness. For the bird, this must be like one of those especially embarrassing physicals where the doctor calls in the interns and they poke at you and talk about you like you’re not there: “A lot of fat on this one.” But it’s all over very quickly and they are back on their way. Most of what we know about bird migration patterns and longevity comes from recaptures of banded birds at other banding stations among the hundreds scattered around the globe.

Some local banding operations include Manomet’s 50 year old banding station on a coastal bluff in Plymouth, and Sue Finnegan’s long term banding work at the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History’s Wings Island in Brewster. At Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Sanctuary, we have been banding with licensed Master Bander James Junda since fall of 2014. But the history of bird banding on the property predates Mass Audubon by many years. The prolific ornithologist Dr. Oliver Austin ran a private bird research station on the property from 1929 until 1958, when Mass Audubon took over. He banded thousands of birds, published many significant papers on Cape Cod ornithology, and was even the one to introduce the first mist nets to the United States from Japan in the 40s. 

Comparing our recent data to Dr. Austin’s tells a story of dramatic habitat change on Cape Cod, from the moonscaped post-agricultural landscape of the early 20th century and its abundant grassland birds, to today’s landscape of forest and suburban development, where grassland birds are scarce. The impacts of climate change are very evident, as now common birds like Carolina Wren, Red-bellied Woodpecker, and even Northern Cardinals were exclusively southern birds in Dr. Austin’s time, and absent from his data.

If you find yourself on the outer Cape on a Saturday, you should sign up for one of Wellfleet Bay’s public banding demonstrations. We have them most Saturday mornings at 8 - call to register. Why visit a banding station? I can guarantee you, it’s hard to deny the sheer wonder of migration as you hold a nearly weightless ball of feathers in your hand, feel its tiny heartbeat, and know that it likely just flew here on its own from perhaps Columbia or Brazil. And boy are its wings tired.
 

Mark Faherty is science coordinator at Mass Audubon's Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary.

Mark Faherty writes the Weekly Bird Report.