Banding adventures, part 1.

Tuesday, June 7: Today, I was vehicle-less, and so unable to do point counts. This sounds unfortunate but really was fortuitous, as it enabled me to help out with the mist netting and banding, which was a fantastic and valuable experience to have under my belt, besides being a lot of fun. So Kristen and Allison picked me up at 5 am and we drove out to Little Britain to the same hay field as yesterday, where we didn't net any bobolinks in the evening. Joe arrived just after us, around 630 am, and we unfurled the mist nets and started the waiting game. For those of you unfamiliar with mist netting (everyone? I sure was), this is what it looks like:

Fancy.

Essentially, they're 12m long, tall, fine-meshed volleyball nets, with the net hanging in a series of four pouches. Also significantly more expensive than a volleyball net, I'd imagine. The idea is that the bird can't really see it, and so flies into it and drops into one of the pouch parts and gets snagged there until we come and untangle it. Sounds a bit stressful on the bird, but it's really not so bad - the netting is so fine and light that they're very gently suspended. They do have the potential to thrash and get pretty tangled, but Joe is skilled at getting them out quickly so that was kept to a minimum. Also, whenever we see something get caught, the general reaction is a mad sprint to the net in case it manages to free itself and escape, so birds are never left in the net for any length of time.

The bobolinks stayed alert and un-caught for the first couple of hours, although we did snag some savannah sparrows and a song sparrow, as their flight is generally quick and dart-y, so they have less time to see the net and react. We band everything we catch, not just bobolinks. Savannah sparrows are tiny, relatively calm, and easy to deal with. The song sparrow we got was significantly feistier, doing its best to inflict mortal injury upon Joe. I think it forgets how very small it is, but it did give its best shot, and their bites aren't entirely painless.

After the couple of hours went by without bobolinks, Joe devised a plan: hack off a branch, and plant it like a shrub, to give them something to sit on close to the net and therefore increase the chances of them flying into it. That really did work; within a few minutes there was a male sitting on it to sing, and twenty minutes or so after that we got our first bobolink in the net :D

Hello handsome - being held in photographer's grip by Joe

He wasn't very pleased with being banded, and even less so with the application of the radio tag, as that involves clipping some of his back feathers and gluing the tag on. 

Finished tag application.

In total, we got three male bobolinks, and one female. Getting the female was exciting and important, as we can track her in order to find out where she is nesting and better evaluate the timing and effect of the hay harvest.

Beauty.

Besides bobolinks, our total came to three savannah sparrows, one song sparrow, and one very spunky red-winged blackbird. He drew blood from Joe with both claws and beak, and chomped Kristen as well. But he was gorgeous.

Showing off his colours.

There are many more pictures of today, which would be tedious to upload one by one onto this blog, but which you can see by following this link: Banding Adventures, part 1

We're going back tomorrow morning to see if we can get some more! I'll update with pics of that as soon as I can :) 

Sarah