Attaching bands, rings, or radio transmitters to wild birds is one of the few ways we have of tracking their migration, breeding habits and life-span and one of the (few) people in Ontario who is licensed to do just that happens to be my boyfriend's father. He is a retired high school science teacher and he spends most of his mornings catching, banding, recording and releasing various types of wild birds. Now as an animal lover and generally curious person I was interested, and as an avid photographer I was delighted to have the opportunity to shoot some wild birds up close. So after hanging out with a bird bander (and going on as many of his expeditions as I could) for over four years, I now have an excellent chance to pimp some of my photos and to tell you, my millions of dedicated readers (ha ha), a little bit about banding birds.
The best time to catch backyard song birds is in the early morning. The bander puts up long, nearly invisible nets called “mist nets”. These nets have pockets in them so when the birds fly in, they bounce down into the pocket where they can't get out. This brown headed cowbird is chillin' out in the net waiting to be taken out. You can see he already has a metal band on his right leg, so he's old hat at this net stuff.
The birds are all collected and put in separate cloth bags. They are then taken out one at a time, their wing length is measured, species, sex and age identified if possible, and a small metal band with a unique number is attached to their leg. All this information is recorded and if a bird with a band is found it's activities can be tracked by following the other places it has been captured or spotted.
After this the birds are released, but sometimes I like to hang out with them a little bit before they fly off. In this picture you can see the sleeping trick. I promise he's not dead, he's only sleeping! In fact, he's not even sleeping, at the time he was looking all around, at me, at my camera and at the world
If a bird feels that he is trapped he will stay still until the situation changes and then he will again try to escape. This means that if you lay a bird on his back and slowly open your hand he will stay there, often, indefinitely. I've also recently been practicing the finger trick where you let the bird grip your finger and then slowly let go. Some will stay there for quite a while, but I must admit it is hard to photograph when one is standing on your finger because unlike the sleeping trick the smallest movement is liable to make them fly away.
As well as banding small song birds I've also been lucky enough to go along to band some other birds for more specific projects. These included osprey babies banded in their nests from a boat,
owls caught in mist nets in the middle of the night,
and once, though they weren't banded because they are too small to really do it safely, we caught a couple of hummingbirds in the mist nets.
All in all bird banding has been one of the most fascinating and delightful things I've gotten to do over the past few years and it's also one of the best photography opportunities I get. I've also learned how to safely handle wild birds and learned a lot of interesting things. For example you've probably all been told that you should never touch baby birds because then their parents would abandon them.
This just isn't true. I understand the point of this myth; you don't want your six year old collecting a handful of baby birds out of their nest and bringing them home, so telling them that they then won't have their mommy anymore works just fine. Unfortunately most people never learn that this isn't the case and my boyfriend's father has told me of more than one occasion where people got very, very upset seeing him take osprey babies from their nest in order to band them.
This doesn't mean I advocate handling wild animals just for fun, and occasionally you can see the stressful impact that capture has on the birds. It's a matter of weighing the pros and cons and paying careful attention to their condition and you should never handle any creature that you haven't been trained to by a professional. If it ever seems like it's too much for them they'll just be released, their safety is more important than the results of the banding. For the most part though I've found that birds have a very relaxed attitude towards life; they don't expend more energy than necessary and if they don't sense any immediate danger they're happy to wait and see what happens. This seems like a good attitude to have, overall, so I think, next time I'm panicking about something, I'll remind myself to think like a bird, and chill.
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