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| Sunrise at Sandy Point Refuge |
The first recorded use of a bird to
deliver messages occurred during the Punic Wars in 218-201BC.
Apparently a crow was sent from a battalion that was surrounded by bad guys. The
receiving end tied a thread with a message attached onto the birds
leg and sent it back. From there on out warrior's and merchants used crows, falcons
and pigeons to alert those in the surrounding countryside of
developing activities that may affect their prosperity or health. But
the actual banding of birds for scientific purposes didn't start
until 1899 when Hans Mortensen attached aluminum rings to Starlings.
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| Sunset at Sandy Point Refuge |
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| Rain coming at Sandy Point Refuge |
The history of banding in North America
saw its share of starts and stops with string, ink, and silver thread
being used to mark Phoebes, Snow Buntings and Black-crowned Night
Herons. By the time the Migratory Bird Treaty was signed in 1918 the
US and Canada had banding programs in place. These were not completely
formalized until 1996 when the North American Banding council sat
down and created a set of guidelines to train banders in the safe,
ethical practices needed to capture and band wild birds.
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| Clear skies at Sandy Point Refuge |
According to Wikipedia approximately
6000 banders are active nationally. Here on St. Croix the US Fish and
Wildlife Service operates the only program i know of in the Virgin
Islands at the Sandy Point
National Wildlife Refuge. Banding is
how Ornithologists and other interested conservationists learn about
birds diversity, longevity, abundance, migration, and tracking. Ideally researchers try
to set up banding sessions at regular times through out the year so
that on-going scientific data can be collected and analyzed.
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| Rain coming at Sandy Point Refuge |
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| Clear again at the Refuge |
Here on St. Croix we just finished up a
three day session and i thought it might be interesting for some of the readers
of this blog to see what we were up to.
The first step in the process of
banding birds is to try and capture them. To do this we erect Mist
Nets that are evenly spaced and placed in an area where we know more
than one specie lives. The nets are composed of nylon mesh and erected kind of like volley ball nets. When not in use the nets are rolled up to
prevent any unwanted captures. The birds can't see the nets because
they are set up against a backdrop of foliage which we use to camouflage our activity. Once the nets are unrolled we are on duty for
it behooves us to get any bird caught out as quickly and safely as possible. Our
first motto is do no harm.
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| Mist nets blending into the foliage |
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| Mist nets getting cleared of captured birds |
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| Mist Nets |
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| Freeing an Elaenia |
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| Almost free |
When a bird is freed from the net it is
put in a bag for safe transport back to the tent.
The bag calms the
bird down while it waits to be written up. At the tent it is first
weighed then banded and measured.
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| Putting a band on a Ground Dove |
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| Measuring the wing of a Ground Dove |
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| A Ground Dove's beautiful eye |
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| Finishing up a Banaquit |
We measure its wing length, tail
length and its bill. We check for molting and brood patches and
determine its sex and age if possible. If a bird has any unusual
characteristics we note those also then release it back into the
wild. Sometimes we get recaptures from previous banding sessions and
we record all the same data for these too. We know that one of our
recaptured Bananaquits is 8 years old.
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| A local Yellow Warbler |
We do at times catch Warblers that have
migrated down from North America and band those hoping that someone
in the states will find them when they return and let us know their
location.
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| Prairie Warbler |
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| Prairie Warbler |
We do at times have trouble with predators but fast work on our part puts them out of commission.
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| Captured Mongoose |
We run the nets in the mornings and
evenings when birds are most active, but if it rains we have to shut
the nets down for birds in wet nets get too stressed, and again our
motto is do no harm. This banding session we had Bananaquits,
Grassquits, Pearly-eyed Thrashers, Ground-Doves, Warblers,
Black-whiskered Vireo's, Zenaida Doves and Caribbean Elaenias.
Hope you enjoyed the pics...see ya next
week.
2 comments:
Nice series of pictures. No doubt sites on the web fully explain bird banding but I expected a shot of what a band looks like and what to do when we find a banded bird. Too often they are road kills picked up by chance.
Birds still carry messages, communications from the great world of Nature that surrounds us. We live there too and so often forget it.
Good question...you can report banded birds at http://report.bandedbirds.org/ReportResighting.aspx
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