Have you ever seen a bird with a plastic band around its leg? Ever wondered how the band got there, and what it is? Well, now’s your chance to find out!
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to shadow a few of the Bird Lab interns and their boss out on a Day 11 banding morning. The Florida Scrub Jays here at the Archbold Biological Station have been studied in great detail for 45 years. One of the most crucial steps in understanding family size, life history, territory development, and anything else they want to know about birds is to be able to identify the individuals.
Since Scrub Jays have unique, but fairly similar, coloring, every bird gets its own set of leg bands; a silver one from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and a set of colored plastic ones from the Bird Lab. Below, you can see a USFWS band, as well as an adult with dark and light green plastic bands along with the silver metal band. The order of the bands, from top to bottom and right leg to left, tell us the identity of each bird on the Station quickly and from a reasonable distance.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service, in conjunction with other smaller agencies such as Archbold, band birds to gain insight on migration patterns, ranges, life histories, and land use habits of a lot of different types of birds all around the nation. More information can be fond here.
So that’s what the bands are, but how do the bands get on the birds?
Baby Scrub Jays have a very hard life. There are many things working against the little ones during the first few weeks after they hatch, but if they reach the age of 11 days, they get a visit from some very well meaning and devoted researchers. First, the babies are carefully taken out of their nest, under the ever watchful eyes of their parents, and brought the short distance to the mobile banding station (i.e. a bed of a truck).
Next, the researchers go into a well scripted dance of measurements on the biggest baby, while the other chicks chill in shade in their portable nest / hat. Shane, the guy seen here handling the birds, starts by drawing a small amount of blood from just underneath the wing. Some of this is processed in the lab to look at the health of the baby, and the rest is sent to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which then determines the sex of the baby.
The birds then get banded with their unique metal and colored leg bracelets, carefully squeezed on with the skilled use of special pliers that only allow the bands to be set loose enough so that they won’t bother the birds as they grow older. If the birds survive for 75 days, they get another set of colored bands that are completely unique to each individual.
Shane then measures the length of a leg bone, a wing feather, and the tail. The little bird also gets gently swaddled in a pantyhose (seriously, I’ve seen pantyhose used for so much science…) with the hose hammock clipped to a scale to get a weight.
After all this is done, the little ones are gently placed back in their nests, to be reunited with their ever watchful parents.
All monitoring, handling, and research associated with the Florida Scrub Jay at the Archbold Biological Station has been completed under the appropriate permits required to work with this federally threatened species.
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