Banding Birds

For those who read this blog without any context, here’s the short of it. I’m doing my Masters of Science in Biology at the University of Windsor. I study bird behaviour, specifically acoustic communication in birds. In laymans terms: birdsong.

I’ll save my SPECIFIC research project for later, but in general behavioural ecology research on birds involves being able to identify one individual from the next, so you can tell who lives where and who each bird is paired with. The way we can tell one individual from the next is by “banding”. We put an aluminum leg band with a number on it on each bird, plus a unique combination of coloured leg-bands. We also take measurements, take a few feathers (to do plumage coloration measurements later on if we wish), and a blood sample (so we can later extract DNA if we want to do any molecular work).

For three summers I was a research assistant for a prof at Laurier, working with white-throated sparrows. For the most part I just took notes, although Ramsay did teach me how to do some things, even though I often didn’t get to practice them myself. Because I’m doing my own research now, Dan (my MSc supervisor) is teaching me how to actually handle birds, and band them, etc. He won’t trust me with our study species yet (I have a tendency to let birds escape my hands because I’m scared of hurting them) but there is another species of bird here that Dan and his partner Stephanie band, called the Long-tailed Manakin. The other day we caught one of these Manakins in our net and Dan asked me to “process” it. So I banded my first bird!! I had to do the whole procedure, without his help, because he was trying to catch a female of our species (a rather boring looking bird called the Rufous-and-white Wren). BTW, we catch birds by setting up nets that look like volleyball nets and putting speakers near them playing the songs of rivals – this makes birds very angry and they try to attack the invading birds, so they end up flying into our nets and voila we caught ‘em! Point of the story is: I banded my first bird, hussah!

The picture is a photo of me holding a Long-tailed Manakin. This isn’t the actual bird I banded, seeing as I was really frustrated and impatient by the time I finished banding my bird, but it’s the same species. Ain’t it cool? It’s not the most flattering of photos... I was a bit nervous. Notice my blurry left hand – it was just holding the bird’s wings so they didn’t flap. The bird doesn’t just sit there nicely when you hold it like that – it tries to flap, and that’s bad, so you have to try to keep it still until the last minute. Hence the nervousness.

Oh, and more on banding: For those who received emails from me last year when I was in Algonquin, you may remember that we name birds based on the combination of colour leg bands we give them. The system Ramsay uses is a bit more strict than the system Dan uses, where the name is really just what the colours are (e.g.: yellow, orange, dark blue, aluminum is YODA, pronounced yoda, and aluminum, mauve, green, red is AMGR, pronounced amger). Dan uses S (for silver) instead of A (for aluminum), and he feels free to insert letters, especially vowels, if it makes the name make more sense. Dan also uses more colours. Here are some examples:

Dark green, orange, green, silver = DOGS
Pink, pink, yellow, silver = PPYS (“peas”)
Blue, dark green, red, silver = BDRS (“butters”)
Mauve, yellow, yellow, silver = MYYS (“mice”)
Pink, orange, pink, silver = POPS
Mauve, orange, mauve, silver = MOMS
White, dark green, silver, chocolate = WDSC (“Woodstock”)
Chocolate, red, silver, pink = CRSP (“crispie”)
Mauve, red, silver, blue = MRSB (“Mrs. B”)
Green, mauve, silver, mauve = GMSM (“gymsum”)

And some others: WPSY (whipsy), RYSO (rizzo), MYSY (missy), WOWS, SPRG (spring), MRNS, SYGO, SPMP (Ess-Pimp), OOPS.

OK you probably get the point. Why am I telling you this?? I’m asking you to come up with some names. It’s a good way to waste time. Feel free to take a little freedom and add vowels, if you like. OH, and each name MUST have an S in it somewhere. Here are the colours:

R = Red
O = Orange
Y = Yellow
G = Green
D = Dark Green
B = Blue
M = Mauve
P = Pink
N = Black
W = White
C = Chocolate
S = Silver/Aluminum