ROCHESTER - As an orange rising sun burned fog off surrounding marshes, net-pickers set off into woods and thickets at the Braddock Bay Bird Observatory with clusters of cloth bags slung over their shoulders.
A tiny bird with a brilliant yellow, black-streaked breast hung motionless upside-down in a gossamer black net. One of the pickers gently untangled the bird, a Magnolia Warbler, tucked it into a drawstring bag, and clipped on a clothespin marked with the net location.
“This is my fourth season here,” said Karen Velas, who was taking time off from her work on the California Condor project with Audubon California to help band birds at Braddock Bay, five miles northwest of Rochester. “This location is wonderful, and the massive volunteer effort and energy is amazing.”
The Braddock Bay Bird Observatory, on a busy migration route on the southern shore of Lake Ontario, is among the top 10 banding sites in the nation in terms of volume, banding about 10,000 birds annually.
According to the U.S. Bird Banding Laboratory, the repository of banding data, about 1.2 million birds a year are banded in the North American Bird Banding Program, jointly administered by the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Canadian Wildlife Service. About 85,000 banded birds are recovered annually, either when they're found dead or are recaptured.
Information gathered from bird banding reveals where birds summer and winter and what migration routes they use. While migration was the primary focus of early banding studies, data from banded birds is also used to study avian behavior and ecology, monitor populations, restore endangered species, assess the effects of environmental changes, set hunting regulations and address concerns such as the spread of West Nile disease.
Mark Deutschlander, a zoologist who studies bird navigation and orientation in migration, said the mission of the Braddock Bay Bird Observatory is research, education, and habitat conservation.
“What makes us really unique is, while the other stations in the top 10 have paid staff, we're an entirely volunteer-based organization,” Deutschlander said. “We all have other jobs. I'm a professor at Hobart and William Smith. We have nurses, chemists, people who work for Kodak. Several of us are working scientists who use data we collect here.”
The site has about a dozen licensed banders. Other volunteers work as net-pickers, collecting the birds for the banders, or as scribes, writing down data called out by banders as they measure and weigh the birds before releasing them.
The data is sent to the U.S. Bird Banding Laboratory in Patuxent, Md.
Every morning when banders are working, assistants unfurl 32 nets, 20 or 40 feet long and 9 or 18 feet tall, in mowed lanes through woods and shrublands surrounding the banding station. Every 30 minutes, pickers collect birds. It's a delicate art, requiring patience to untangle the fine netting from legs, wings and tailfeathers of a sometimes fluttering, sometimes biting bird.
Betsy Brooks started working full-time as a volunteer in bird studies after her children were grown. She is widely respected as a master bander, and professional scientists travel from across the country for her training courses at Braddock Bay.
“I've trained more than 100 individuals,” said Brooks, who lives 65 miles south of Braddock Bay in Alfred. “We have visitors from all over the world who stop at the banding station. I believe very strongly in educating and training banders so they understand what they're doing and why.”
When Brooks started banding at Braddock Bay in 1985, she had to carry all the nets and other gear in her car and set up a makeshift banding station on top of a trash bin. Now, there's a bright indoor laboratory in a former concession stand from a nearby park, with several work tables where volunteers can efficiently band several hundred birds in a morning.
“This is one of the best places to get training as a bird bander,” said Alan Clark, a professor at Fordham University whose research specialty is Magellanic penguins.
For each bird captured and banded, the banders record species, age, sex, and weight, and they note how much fat is visible under the transparent skin of the abdomen when feathers are blown aside.
“By noting the fat storage, we learn a lot about the energetics of migration, how much fat they need to continue on,” Deutschlander said. “The birds stop here along the lake shore to fuel up before crossing or to refuel after they've come south across the lake. We've done habitat surveys so we know a lot about what kind of foods they need.”
Bob McKinney, a bent and wizened 82-year-old who gets around laboriously on crutches, has banded well over 100,000 birds encompassing just over 100 species in 50 years of volunteer work at Braddock Bay.
“A Gray Catbird that I banded here was found dead a few weeks later on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, 200 miles south of New Orleans,” McKinney said. “A Semipalmated Sandpiper I banded was found at the former France penal colony of Devil's Island off the coast of French Guiana.”
The Braddock Bay Bird Observatory has begun a fundraising campaign to expand its facilities to include a classroom, a larger indoor banding room and an outdoor banding station.
Visitors have the opportunity to see a variety of species up close, take pictures, ask questions, and perhaps stroke a feathered back. Banders work every morning during migration season, from April through early June and August through September, with some warbler banding in July.
On the Net
Braddock Bay Bird Observatory: www.bbbo.org
North American Bird Banding Program: www.pwrc.usgs.gov/bbl
“This is my fourth season here,” said Karen Velas, who was taking time off from her work on the California Condor project with Audubon California to help band birds at Braddock Bay, five miles northwest of Rochester. “This location is wonderful, and the massive volunteer effort and energy is amazing.”
The Braddock Bay Bird Observatory, on a busy migration route on the southern shore of Lake Ontario, is among the top 10 banding sites in the nation in terms of volume, banding about 10,000 birds annually.
According to the U.S. Bird Banding Laboratory, the repository of banding data, about 1.2 million birds a year are banded in the North American Bird Banding Program, jointly administered by the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Canadian Wildlife Service. About 85,000 banded birds are recovered annually, either when they're found dead or are recaptured.
Information gathered from bird banding reveals where birds summer and winter and what migration routes they use. While migration was the primary focus of early banding studies, data from banded birds is also used to study avian behavior and ecology, monitor populations, restore endangered species, assess the effects of environmental changes, set hunting regulations and address concerns such as the spread of West Nile disease.
Mark Deutschlander, a zoologist who studies bird navigation and orientation in migration, said the mission of the Braddock Bay Bird Observatory is research, education, and habitat conservation.
“What makes us really unique is, while the other stations in the top 10 have paid staff, we're an entirely volunteer-based organization,” Deutschlander said. “We all have other jobs. I'm a professor at Hobart and William Smith. We have nurses, chemists, people who work for Kodak. Several of us are working scientists who use data we collect here.”
The site has about a dozen licensed banders. Other volunteers work as net-pickers, collecting the birds for the banders, or as scribes, writing down data called out by banders as they measure and weigh the birds before releasing them.
The data is sent to the U.S. Bird Banding Laboratory in Patuxent, Md.
Every morning when banders are working, assistants unfurl 32 nets, 20 or 40 feet long and 9 or 18 feet tall, in mowed lanes through woods and shrublands surrounding the banding station. Every 30 minutes, pickers collect birds. It's a delicate art, requiring patience to untangle the fine netting from legs, wings and tailfeathers of a sometimes fluttering, sometimes biting bird.
Betsy Brooks started working full-time as a volunteer in bird studies after her children were grown. She is widely respected as a master bander, and professional scientists travel from across the country for her training courses at Braddock Bay.
“I've trained more than 100 individuals,” said Brooks, who lives 65 miles south of Braddock Bay in Alfred. “We have visitors from all over the world who stop at the banding station. I believe very strongly in educating and training banders so they understand what they're doing and why.”
When Brooks started banding at Braddock Bay in 1985, she had to carry all the nets and other gear in her car and set up a makeshift banding station on top of a trash bin. Now, there's a bright indoor laboratory in a former concession stand from a nearby park, with several work tables where volunteers can efficiently band several hundred birds in a morning.
“This is one of the best places to get training as a bird bander,” said Alan Clark, a professor at Fordham University whose research specialty is Magellanic penguins.
For each bird captured and banded, the banders record species, age, sex, and weight, and they note how much fat is visible under the transparent skin of the abdomen when feathers are blown aside.
“By noting the fat storage, we learn a lot about the energetics of migration, how much fat they need to continue on,” Deutschlander said. “The birds stop here along the lake shore to fuel up before crossing or to refuel after they've come south across the lake. We've done habitat surveys so we know a lot about what kind of foods they need.”
Bob McKinney, a bent and wizened 82-year-old who gets around laboriously on crutches, has banded well over 100,000 birds encompassing just over 100 species in 50 years of volunteer work at Braddock Bay.
“A Gray Catbird that I banded here was found dead a few weeks later on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, 200 miles south of New Orleans,” McKinney said. “A Semipalmated Sandpiper I banded was found at the former France penal colony of Devil's Island off the coast of French Guiana.”
The Braddock Bay Bird Observatory has begun a fundraising campaign to expand its facilities to include a classroom, a larger indoor banding room and an outdoor banding station.
Visitors have the opportunity to see a variety of species up close, take pictures, ask questions, and perhaps stroke a feathered back. Banders work every morning during migration season, from April through early June and August through September, with some warbler banding in July.
On the Net
Braddock Bay Bird Observatory: www.bbbo.org
North American Bird Banding Program: www.pwrc.usgs.gov/bbl
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