Braddock Bay Bird Observatory 2014 Spring Bander Training

This past spring I've gotten quite a bit of banding experience with white-crowned sparrows. They are great birds to work with. They don't get very tangled in the nets so are easy to extract, they are docile in hand, and are relatively large so are easy to take blood samples from.

While I felt pretty confident in my white-crowned sparrow banding abilities, I wanted to be able to handle and gather data on a wider variety of birds.

And so it was that from May 12-23 I participated in the 2014 Spring Bander Training hosted by the Braddock Bay Bird Observatory in upstate New York, right on the edge of Lake Ontario.

Braddock Bay provides excellent stopover habitat for migratory birds. BBBO opens their nets for the spring and fall seasons to track migration. The class is situated at the tail end of the spring migration so we got the special treat of seeing birds in their alternate or breeding plumage.

There were seven of us in the class and over the past two weeks we learned all about how to age and sex birds as well as the ethics of bird banding and how to run a station of our own. Here's a sampling of some of the birds we banded:

White-throated Sparrow (tan morph)

Palm Warbler

Wood Thrush

Grey Catbird (we caught a bunch of these - feisty and squawky!)

Ruby-crowned Kinglet (male) with an orange crown

Canada Warbler

Indigo Bunting

Baltimore Oriole

Tennessee Warbler

Black and White Warbler

Often times during the spring males and females look very different from each other. This female threw us all off when we first saw her:

The trick we learned was to look for the "wing check" - a patch of white found on both wings of the male and female. Her partner looks like this:

The black-throated Blue Warbler.

Another tricky female:

But a reddish tinge to her upper coverts gave it away:

A Red-winged Blackbird.

We also saw some beautiful sunrises - BBBO opens nets 15 minutes before sunrise and we band for 6 hours:

The very first day we caught 330 birds!!

We practiced passing birds - the passer holds in the photographer's grip while the receiver takes the bird in the bander's grip:

Miranda (holding in photographer's grip) passing a wood thrush to Kit (taking it in bander's grip).

We also earned our stripes (feathers?) by getting bitten by several big-billed birds!

Overall, it was a fantastic experience filled with many new friends and many many birds!