Mist Nets and Banding, the Life of a Birder

After my herpetofaunal survey was complete I recalled that the Albany Pine Bush Preserve often does bird banding in the fall.  I had come into this information at the same time I heard about the possible opportunity with the herps back in the spring; while networking at a local natural history conference.  Good stuff!  So, I reached out and contacted the Pine Bush staff once again.  As it turned out, they had started their banding in August, but I was able to come in for the second half of the project.

I love birds.  I think you have to in order to get up well before the sun and trek out into the inky morning to put up mist nets.  Now, normally I have to be to work at 8:30 and the banding didn’t start until 6 or 6:30 A.M. and then usually went until 11 A.M. (depending on when they decided to put the nets up).  However, I have a great boss and co-workers; they didn’t mind me coming in a little late once in a while.  The banding was generally held twice a week and was dependent on weather.  It was not dependent on the activity level of swarming mosquitoes, which had become rejuvenated after all the wet weather in August.  Needless to say most of us were covered in bug spray or wearing bug-resistant clothing.  Like with the herps, we tried to keep our hands clean as we didn’t want to handle birds and coat them with chemicals.

I’ll start off by saying I have very little experience with birds.  Last year, when I attended the Northeastern chapter of The Wildlife Society’s wildlife techniques course we did bird surveys through call, and I had taken an Ornithology course in school where we learned about the behavior, evolution, anatomy, and call of more birds, but I had never actually had hands-on experience in this field.  Due to that I had decided to be more of an assistant and observer.  I let the experienced handlers remove the birds from the net while I observed their techniques and asked questions.  I wasn’t about to risk bird injuries by jumping into a situation unprepared.

We had ten mist nets set up at various locations around the Pine Bush’s educational center.  Before I get ahead of myself, some of you might be wondering what the heck a mist net is and what that has to do with bird banding.  Basically these are long, mesh nets strung out between two poles.  They can vary in length and height depending on target species.  Birds, or bats, can’t see these nets very well and end up flying into them and getting tangled.  Now that may seem a little mean but this technique is pretty safe.  Trained extractors (people doing the removing) can safely and gently remove the animal from the net.

Mist net dangers include the animal getting too hot or too cold while trapped in the net; predators finding the entangled birds; injury while being removed.  To reduce the chances of these occurring we based our rounds on the weather.  If it was hot or cold we’d check the nets every half an hour; if the weather was mild we would check them every hour.  The extractors all had experience and when a volunteer was ready to take the leap and try to remove a bird, it was with the supervision of an experienced person there to guide them.  Dangers to the handlers: bird poop.

Once removed from the net the birds were put in small bags.  This made transporting the birds easier while making the rounds, instead of trying to hold several angry birds.  They were then brought back to the banding station and hung up on a little line.  Hanging their bags up was because there were often many more birds than banders.  Smaller birds were often done first in order to reduce their stress.

What sort of data is being collected likely depends on the organization conducting the project.  We took down the name of the species, the sex and age if distinguishable (some bird species have marked sex differences all year round while others often look the same outside of the mating season; age can sometimes be told by looking at select feathers on the bird’s wings and tail as well as checking their skull for lines or shadows that may indicate a not-yet-sealed skull, similar to a human baby’s soft spot), fat levels, wing length, weight, wing and body molting, and on select species a feather was taken for DNA analysis.  After all the data was recorded a small aluminum band was selected based on the size of the bird’s leg, the unique numbers on the band were recorded in order to identify the bird, and then they were safely released to fly away and scream out their insults at the indignity of it all.

I was able to assist in releasing the birds as well as holding them for their photographs, carrying the bagged birds, and generally just asking questions.  I had the pleasure of being bit by several species.  Some of them were fierce little things!  And I thought the blue jays were quite funny because they would clasp their feet together, so when it was time to release them they wouldn’t at first take advantage of the freedom because they were too busy holding their own feet.  They would flop over in my hands and look around for a few minutes before finally taking off.  I also had several small species that seemed to think my hand was quite comfortable.  I actually had to nudge them before they stood up and flew away.  One bird decided that he wanted to take refuge in the jacket of the bander, slip under his arm, literally hang upside down for a few minutes, gently land on the ground under the chair, and then seemed to decide it was safe to leave.

I enjoyed my first experience with birds.  They are very cute, of course, and I liked the relatively harmless way they were handled.  Next time the project starts perhaps I will take the next step and learn how to extract them from the mist nets.