Bird Banding Demonstration at Cuyahoga Valley National Park

19 Nov Bird Banding Demonstration at Cuyahoga Valley National Park

Here at Cuyahoga Valley National Park, we are a part of a larger effort studying bird survivorship and bird migration throughout the park. With federally permitted practices from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Bird Banding Laboratory, this park is able to capture, handle, band, and release resident and migratory birds. Through this practice, trained professionals are able collect large amounts of data on captured birds while minimizing possible negative impacts and handling time. This data is then imputed to the USGS Bird Banding Laboratory where they are tracking bird populations across North America, using the imputed data repository from all the bird banding sites.

The process of bird banding starts at setting up nets to catch birds at a given site. These nets are called mist nets. Mist nets are a thin polyester mesh that is practically invisible to a quickly flying bird, when set up properly. These nets are routinely monitored to remove any captured birds that have flown into the net by trained people. This part of the process needs to be very carefully done by the person extracting the bird because birds can get loosely or very tightly trapped within the net, requiring meticulous movements to remove the bird. Once the bird is removed, the banding process will begin by attaching a properly fitting band on the bird’s foot. Different birds have different sized feet so it’s critical to know the species of the captured bird to know what band size it uses. Following that, measurements can be taken on the bird that include: age, sex, brood patch, cloacal protuberance, muscle, fat, feather molt and wear, wing cord, and weight, along with species, time captured, and where it was captured. While it’s a long list of measurements to be taken, a well experienced bander will only have the bird in hand for a minute or two before promptly releasing the bird.

Black-throated blue warbler (Setophaga caerulescens).

Oven bird (Seiurus aurocapilla) in our biologist’s hand.

Oven bird in a tube to measure weight in grams.

Oven bird on its back for muscle and fat check

In celebration of fall migration, Latino Conservation week, and World Migratory Bird Day, we at Cuyahoga Valley National Park set up a public bird banding demonstration. The goal of this event, along with our celebrations, is to involve the public in the work that is being done in the park. When the public is involved with conservation practice, like bird conservation through bird banding, people are able to get connected to ideas or nature in ways they may have not before. This creates a personal connection that people can fall back onto that can make them advocates for nature or reinforce their advocacy through experiences. In this event, people were able to get up close and personal to birds in a way that’s almost impossible in the wild. They can see the individual feathers on their wings and bodies, see the coloring on a striking bird, and maybe even get to touch one. An experience like this is one that can be reflected on next time someone interacts with a bird.

Through this event revolving around fall migration, we used it to communicate what birds need to contend with while they are migrating and how you can get involved. Migrating birds face a lot of dangers when the seasons are changing and need lots of good habitat that they can use to stopover and recover to continue the journey. This tells the need of a viable habitat that is filled with all kinds of food and safe resting locations in native plant ecosystems. This event also revolved around coffee as a way to communicate bird conservation and native plant ecosystems. The coffee we provided at the event was Smithsonian Bird Friendly® coffee, which is a certification seal that conveyed that this coffee’s production is sustainable and protects bird habitat within the farms. Bird friendly coffee is associated with practices that grow coffee in shaded conditions, meaning there is a multi-tier forest above the coffee that retains the jungle’s biodiversity. The Bird Friendly seal tells the consumer that it is grown organically, deforestation-free, and protects the critical habitat used for birds, along with all the different kinds of species that are also reliant on the habitat. The birds migrating from Ohio are largely moving through the countries with high coffee production in Central and South America. So through sustainable coffee purchases, people are able to get involved with bird and habitat conservation in the winter sites for the bird species seen moving through Ohio.