Bird Banding! guest post by Meghan Jacklin

Ever wonder what it’s like to be a biologist? It is a truly rewarding career, but it might not be what you expect! Read on to learn about what a career in biology can be like, in a post from our guest writer Meghan Jacklin.

My name is Meghan, and I am a biologist in Edmonton Alberta. I was first inspired to care about wildlife and natural areas from a young age through my love of wolves, and my family canoeing and camping activities. I struggled to find the right education, until I heard about the Environmental sciences program at the U of A. I got my bachelors degree in Conservation Biology, and then it was time to head out into the real world!

Meghan (right) and a coworker, birding despite rain AND mosquitos!

During my degree I started volunteering for a local organization called the Beaverhill Bird Observatory. That is where things got really interesting. The Beaverhill bird observatory studies bird migration through bird banding. But what is bird banding?

Bird banding means putting a lightweight metal band with a unique number on a bird's leg. If this bird is ever caught or found dead somewhere else in the world, we have learned valuable information about that bird and where it traveled!

 Neat! But why do this?

About 40% of the worlds 10,000 bird species are migratory, meaning they spend part of the year in one place and then undertake a large movement to another location for a different part of the year. This can make them uniquely vulnerable – if their habitat, the place that they live, is destroyed or damaged in one area, but not in the other, we may not recognize what the problem is without understanding where birds are migrating to and from.

A banded Dark-eyed Junco

What else do we learn from bird banding?
We also can determine whether a bird hatched this year or is an adult. This helps us understand whether problems are occurring at the breeding grounds (if not many babies are hatching) or if problems are at the wintering grounds (there are enough babies but not many returning adults). We can check roughly how fat a bird is! This is important because some birds migrate hundreds to thousands of kilometres, sometimes without stopping. They must put on lots of weight before starting so they have enough fuel to make it to their journey's end.

How does it actually work?
We first have to get up reeeaaally early, because that is when the birds are around! We get up half an hour before the sun even rises – urg. It is worth it though! We then set up a series of very fine mesh nets, so fine that you can hardly see them. As the birds are flying through the bushes in the early morning, they don’t see the nets, and fly right in.

Can you see this songbird mist net?

Then the staff and volunteers get busy. We check the nets every 30 minutes and remove every caught bird, and place them in individual cloth baggies to bring back to our banding lab. It takes lots of training, and dexterity to carefully take the birds out of the nets! We also get our exercise in, seeing as the distance to check all the nets is around 1 km in length, and we need to walk that every 30 minutes.

Lots of birds in bags,waiting to be banded at the lab!

Once we get back to the lab, we start the banding process. We add the band using special pliers, and this part is actually pretty easy to learn. What’s harder is accurately determining the age and sex of the bird. That requires study and practise, and careful reading of the “bird banding bible” Pyle, the widely accepted expert in North America.

During the banding process, we also get pooped on… a lot! We learn a lot about birds and can help their species to thrive, but no wild bird enjoys being caught, and they let us know! We are covered in poop, and little scratches from beaks and claws by the end of a day. Most songbirds don’t hurt too much when they bite, but if we catch a bird used to cracking seeds – ouch!

An adult Great Horned Owl about to be banded.

 With all that said, bird banding is a very rewarding path for a biologist. Until you start to look and listen, you don’t realize the beautiful colours, shapes, and sizes of the birds right here in our backyards. With all the troubles that birds face, from window strikes, cat predation, habitat loss, and changing climate, it is wonderful to know I am making a difference.
If this sounds right for you, it’s never too early to get started. Many banding stations are open for the public to visit, volunteer, and learn about this important work. Look for one near you!

Snakes at the Seaside and Birds in the Bush

By Claire Eamer

"Snake!" yelled 8-year-old Carys, and dove for the grassy bank beside the trail. She emerged clutching a deeply puzzled garter snake at least 60 centimetres long, with elegant checkerboard markings on its sides and a jagged yellow stripe running the length of its back.

Western garter snake, found at Pipers Lagoon Park, Nanaimo.

The rest of the group -- more than two dozen kids and adults, with an age range from 8 to 80-ish -- crowded around to admire her catch. Our leader, biology professor Tim Goater of Nanaimo's Vancouver Island University (VIU) identified it as a female western garter snake (Thamnophis elegans), almost certainly pregnant, and the largest specimen he had seen at Pipers Lagoon, the small seaside park we were exploring. Western garter snakes have a variable diet, depending on where they live, he explained. Carys's prize catch would specialize in hunting intertidal fishes among the park's rocks and tidepools.

Professor Tim Goater with
a large clam at Pipers Lagoon.

Once everyone had admired the snake, we put her back on the slope beside the trail and watched, fascinated, as she disappeared into the grass and undergrowth in less than a second.

The mixed group of kids and adults wasn't just a casual group of visitors to the seashore. We were students in a class called Explorations of Animal Diversity, one of 10 offerings at this year's edition of Grandkids University. The two-day program is open to kids aged 7 to 13 and to their grandparents or grandparent-equivalents (other senior relatives or special friends).

Carys, left, entranced by birdbanding.

Carys and I (I'm her great-aunt) were in our second year at Grandkids University this year. Her brother, Rowan, was in his third year. He and his special friend, Susan, spent two days in the chemistry lab, making soap, slime, invisible ink, instant ice cream, and pop-bottle rockets -- and learning a considerable amount of chemistry along the way.

Over two days, Carys and I got to see and handle garter snakes both in the lab and in the field, peer at insects through a dissecting microscope, search for animals in the intertidal zone, visit a bird-banding station, dissect a ratfish in search of parasites, and tour VIU's International Centre for Sturgeon Studies.

Master bander Eric Demers shows the wing feathers
of a Common Yellowthroat.

And, at the end of the two days, we all attended a graduation ceremony in the university's theatre. VIU's symbols -- a mace and a beautifully decorated steering paddle -- were formally piped through the theatre to the stage. Then, the VIU registrar, in full academic robes, presented each adult and child with a completion certificate. Kids and adults who had attended Grandkids University for 5 years also received "Masters" medals. (Both Rowan and Carys are determined to get their Masters!)

A female American Goldfinch receives its individualized band.

This is the 11th year for VIU's Grandkids University, and it drew a record 163 participants. Almost a dozen former kid participants have grown up to become VIU students, and a number of the participating adults also take VIU classes. Clearly it's part of the university's recruiting program, but it does more than just generate students.

Carys found a seastar that had lost one arm
and was still regrowing its replacement.

Both the kids and the grandparents learn things -- about the subject they are studying and about each other. For two days, they are equals, experiencing the pleasure of learning something new and interesting. The kids can see that adults don't know everything, but that they can learn. The adults get a chance to see how bright and capable the kids are.

And everyone is reminded that learning isn't drudgery. It's fun.

All photos by Claire Eamer.

Bird Banding

My friends Robyn and Mark are bird-watchers. Oh, they do a lot of other things, too, that you can read about on their blog at this link. But it's their bird hobby that I'm envying today. On the first Saturday of October, Robyn and Mark were helping researchers by banding birds. It was a wonderful day for citizen scientists helping experts with hands-on gathering of data!

This bird is a hermit thrush, observing Robyn as carefully as she observes it!

As Robyn says:

This morning Mark and I volunteered with the Rocky Point Bird Observatory banding migrating song birds. We helped with retrieving the birds from the nets (37 today) and entering their info into a database. Very interesting work and it confirmed how much I DON'T know about birds

The nets used to catch birds are almost invisible, and suspended between.posts like a fence. Here's a Chestnut-backed chickadee caught safely in a net. A moment later, a researcher carefully untangled the bird and held it while Robyn and Mark helped to band the bird and write notes about it. The bird banding is also being done at night, when the researchers catch owls.

Here's the whiteboard with notes about the numbers of birds caught, and their types.The total count of birds banded by Rocky Point Bird Observatory after day 74.of their study? 2,486!

You can read more about Rocky Point Bird Observatory at this link to their Facebook page, or go to their own website at this link. 

The Sci/Why Blog has had another post written about volunteering for a bird banding event, and you can read it at this link.
If you want to volunteer with bird studies in your own area, start by looking up provincial resources and try the nearest university biology program to find out who needs you. Don't worry about handling the birds -- even if all you do is write down the information as fast as the expert can say it, you're doing useful work that lets the expert handle the birds. Maybe there's a birdwatching club at the local recreation centre, or a birding store at a mall. The public library will have books on birds and birdwatching as well!

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Volunteer to Help Bird Banders

by Helen Mason

You don't have to be an ornithologist to help with bird banding. Last fall, I volunteered at Prince Edward Point Bird Observatory. This is a volunteer-run research station located on the eastern tip of Prince Edward County where it extends south into Lake Ontario. It's the first landfall for migrating birds coming across from the south in the spring and the last for those heading to warmer climes each fall.

As well as people who recognize the difference between a hermit thrush and a Swainson's thrush, the observatory needs willing hands to put up the nets at dawn, take them down six hours later, hold the collecting bags, and record information provided by the experts. It's easy to do the recording for inexperienced banders who take five minutes to process a bird, but some people know the species so well they can identify, sex, age, and weigh a bird in less than a minute. New scribes need to focus when volunteers such as this man from the United Kingdom examine a gray-cheeked thrush.

Experienced volunteers identify, sex, age, and weigh each bird before banding it.

While volunteers are watching, they learn a lot about familiar species. Note the orangey red on this golden-crowned kinglet, for example. This colouring differentiates it from the ruby-crowned kinglet, which has red without any yellow.

Golden-crowned kinglet

Banders constantly check their bird books as even something as minor as white around the eye can differentiate between this Nashville warbler and a similar species. Fortunately, the head bander is always around to double-check identifications.

Nashville warbler

 Interestingly, it isn't just humans who look out for migrating birds. This sharp-shinned hawk got caught in a net while chasing a smaller bird.

Sharp-shinned hawk

 This barred owl was sitting on a tree in the net lanes where they trap saw-whet owls in the evening. To protect the saw-whets, banders trapped this female, banded her, and then relocated her. Take a look at that beak. No wonder people were so cautious handling the two-year-old.

Barred owl

Are you still wondering how to tell a Swainson's thrush from a hermit thrush? The Swainson's has a brown tail. The hermit's tail is red. They both have speckled breasts, as do all members of the thrush family, including the robin. Learn more by volunteering at or visiting your local banding station.

Hermit thrush

Swainson's thrush

Like all members of the thrush family, this Swainson's thrush has a speckled breast.