Banding birds

May 3, 2009 I went to a local recreational area to find people out enjoying the sun while it is out.  I saw to ladies in the bushes doing something abnormal but upon further investigation, I discovered they were catching birds and banding them to keep track of them and their migratory paths.  Meradith works for the ROBM and at 7:30 every morning during the migration season she goes out and sets up small nets to catch these birds as they zip through the air.  Every 20 to 30 min she will go back out to untangle any birds in the nets and then put them in a cloth bag and take them back to work station or picnic table.  Carefully she picked each bird out separately and did measurements of the wings, tail feathers, certain markings, and fat other info about the bird such as species, age, and gender were recorded as well.  The point of banding birds is so that they can track how many there are and when they return back to there summer homes.  Today a total of 23 new birds were recorded and 7 were re-banded, at about 1 pm we went out for the last time to roll up the nets so animals don’t get tangled in them, and to retrieve any last birds that had flown into them.  For me this was a great experience, I walk this area multiple times a week and knowing what birds are out is nice and allowed for a more interesting photo shoot.