Field Readable Birds

Inspired by a recent conversation with David Craig, Professor of Biology at Willamette University, I want to share some great ways to take your birding and citizen science to the next step. In our ever more connected world, you can learn a lot about a bird’s private business (its own soap opera, as Dave calls it) when you find one with field readable tag. Check out road kills, window collisions, and live birds you see through your binoculars to get involved. If they have any markers on them that are clearly the result of someone putting them there, you are in business. In Dave’s Tedx talk, linked below, you can learn how you can become part of the community of followers of that bird.

For instance, here are some photos I took within the last week of almost-field-readable birds in my backyard. You can clearly see the standard FWS aluminum band on their legs. But even with the sharpest eyes, you can’t read the number on those bands because they wrap around the leg. The reason I call them almost-field-readable is that I am 97.2% certain that we at GBBO banded these birds almost exactly a year ago during banding training at this very location. I didn’t see them through spring, summer, and fall, but here they were when winter arrived. It would be close to a miracle if these birds had been banded by anyone but us, and we can’t wait until the ambient temperatures are high enough to put up mistnets to confirm that they are “ours”. All three sparrows, Golden-crowned, White-crowned, and Song, only occur in winter at this location, so if we confirm that these are the same birds that we banded last winter, they might not just have high site fidelity for their breeding sites (as is known from summer banding studies), but also perhaps for their favorite wintering spots. More data needed (note to GBBO staff: more winter banding!).

To learn more about field readable birds, check out DavidCraig’s Tedx Salem “Bird Nerds Unite” talk, as well as the Flickr group“Birds with Field Readable Markers”, the Animal Tracker App website, and make sure to report all native birds with readable aluminum or color bands to the USGS Bird Banding Lab, who keeps official track of all marked birds in the United States.

- Elisabeth

Winter Guests Ready to Leave Western Nevada

Golden-crowned Sparrow sporting new band

Golden-crowned Sparrows nest in the western half of Alaska and in the northwestern provinces of Canada. In winter, however, people living along the Pacific coast of the contiguous U.S. states and in far-western Nevada can enjoy their pretty song and perky foraging behaviors. Their winter range is often underestimated in field guides, and based on GBBO’s small bird banding project north of Reno, they remain throughout the winter months once they find a good spot in western Nevada. 

If you live in an area where Golden-crowned Sparrows winter, you can attract them by planting dense, tall shrubs such as sumac, Apache plume, currants, and wild roses. They also make frequent use of bird baths and platform feeders, where they are usually surrounded by many of their cousins, the Gambel’s White-crowned Sparrow. To view a map of sightings of the Golden-crowned Sparrow in recent years, visit the eBird website here. 

- Elisabeth

Migration: A Yellow-rumped Tale

"Myrtle Warbler" male banded on the same day

One of the great joys in any bird banding project is getting recaptures, and gaining that extra piece of insight into the lives of those individuals and species.  

I just heard the details about one of our recaptured birds from last spring’s banding efforts at The Nature Conservancy’s McCarran Ranch – a Yellow-rumped (Myrtle) Warbler.  Ken Voget, who was banding, found her in a mixed flock of Myrtle and Audubon-type Yellow-rumped Warblers – it turns out she had been banded in late September 2012, near Imperial, Saskatchewan … and a year and a half later, stopped over in Nevada on her way north!

Happy travels,

Jen

From the Great Salt Lake to Las Vegas Wash: Pelicans

On October 31, at Las Vegas Wash, I spotted a small group of pelicans - two of which had been banded.  One of the bird's tags were readable - two numbers and a letter in white writing on a green tag.  It turns out it had been banded as a chick on July 23rd up in the Great Salt Lake.  Here's a short article that the Review-Journal published earlier this year on the banding there.  Keep your eyes peeled!  And remember, if you find banded birds (pelicans or otherwise), please do report their bands to the Bird Banding Lab here - though with the larger wing tags like those on these pelicans (since you're not likely to be seeing the leg bands), you'll have to use their email address.

Happy birding!
Jen