Bird Banding

For the past 2 years, I have been involved in a bird banding project at the Rio Grande Nature Center, near my house. I first found out about this project when I went on the bird walks at the nature center every Saturday and Sunday morning. We would stop by the banding station as part of the walk, and the banders would bring out birds to show us. Then one of us would get to release the bird. I have had parrots since 1989, so I'm used to handling birds. But parrots are much bigger birds. I only became interested in wild birds after moving to Albuquerque. Once I had held a warm, soft tiny songbird (who actually look much smaller in the hand than they do when you see them in the field), I was hooked. I wanted to be involved in this project.

Eventually, I got brave enough to ask if I could help. Steve and Nancy Cox, who head up this project, said yes. So I started hanging out at the banding station. My first season, I got involved 2 weekends before the fall banding season ended, and I figured it would be too cold for me when the winter banding started up in January. So I really didn't get to do much. But last year I learned how to record information and remove birds from nets, and eventually I started coming before sunrise to help put the nets up. (When we would put up the nets at the beginning of this season, bats and nighthawks swooped around us - totally cool. I wouldn't miss being there to put the nets up - the nature center is beautiful at sunrise, with a beautiful view of the Sandia mountains. A couple of weeks ago, there was mist on the ponds, and a lone white pelican swam on one of the misty ponds.)

This season, Steve said I should learn how to process birds. That involves measuring the bird for a band, putting the band on, then taking a wing and tail measurement, checking for molting feathers, assessing the fat and muscle mass, determining the age and sex of the bird if possible (some can't be sexed - only the birds know for sure!) and weighing it. He said chipping sparrows would be a good bird for me to start with. But we are having a really slow season, and we didn't get any more chipping sparrows - just tiny, tiny warblers. Warblers are wonderful birds, but also pains - they never sit still when you are birdwatching and trying to identify them, and they weave themselves through the mist nets we use. And they are not good to learn on. So I asked if white crowned sparrows, a very common fall and winter bird here, would be good. He said yes.

Today I finally got my chance - we caught lots of white crowned sparrows. After they had been processed, I got to do all the processing steps for practice. To asses the fat and muscle on the birds, you have to blow on the soft body feathers really hard until they part and show you the skin underneath - fat is visible through the skin. I also found out that they are much easier to hold than warblers. There are two major ways to handle the birds - the bander's grip, where you make a v with your index and middle finger and place the back of the bird's neck in the v and wrap your hand around the bird, and the leg grip. I do the bander's grip just fine, but I hadn't learned to hold the birds by the legs, and when I tried it with warblers, they escaped my grasp so I let them go so they wouldn't hurt themselves. (You have to hold the birds by the upper part of the leg, near the body, and the warblers would always get one leg loose.) The white crowned sparrows were much easier to hold - even when they flapped their wings, I was able to keep their legs secured, and I was able to hold a bird with one hand and take photos of it with the other.

For anyone who hasn't seen a white crowned sparrow, I'm including photos of one - they are a relatively large, chunky sparrow. They sing all winter, which is unusual. The juveniles have brown and tan stripes on their heads instead of black and white, making it very easy to assess the age. This one is an adult.

Among the other birds we had today were a hermit thrush, one of my favorite birds, and a Wilson's warbler, our most common warbler during fall migration. The hermit thrush has a beautiful song. It's closely related to the American Robin.


This Wilson's warbler is a female - the male has a black cap. They are a very bright yellow.