Dave Londres

“Aieeee! Mmimmblewhimble,” seems to accurately describe the scream-turned-whimpering noise I made. I couldn’t scream, but I badly needed to. “Please let go, let go please, please! Ouuucch!” I was pleading with—no, not an assailant, and I was not in some questionable part of downtown Rochester—a chickadee.

The impish little bird had my cuticle clasped painfully in its beak while I was trying (unsuccessfully) to measure the length of its leg. It felt as if someone had taken a pair of particularly sharp geometrical compasses and decided to shove them between my cuticle and thumb.

It’s so absurd, isn’t it, how all of my 100 pounds are of no match to the needle sharp beak of a 10 g bird I’m supposed to have complete control over? Anyway, the result was yet another band-aid around my mutilated thumb, and what I thought looked like a rather self-satisfied chickadee flying away in an indignant huff after I had (somewhat clumsily) managed to put an aluminum ring around its minuscule right foot. Precious, no?

But injured fingers are not uncommon on banders. Bird banding, or “ringing” as it is known in other countries, is an ornithological research tool, one that the North American Banders’ Study Guide terms as “a delicate art and a precise science.” It involves putting uniquely numbered aluminum rings or bands around birds’ feet and gathering data about various aspects of them. Under faculty sponsors Dr. John Waud, Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, and Dr. David Mathiason, Director of the Honors Program, bird banding happens on campus.

RITBO!

The RIT Bird Observatory, or “RITBO,” as the banders affectionately call it, is located on the edge of campus by the Astronomical Observatory. The Army Corps Engineers and RIT have agreed that the land around it will not be developed; rather it will be kept as a conservation area for wildlife.

“We [RITBO] are allowed to be out there,” explained Mathiason, “the Banding Station can stay for scientific reasons. It’s a very unique situation, this little 32-acre wild microcosm that we are allowed to be inside. We are inside the conservation area... If we hadn’t put that shed [the Banding Station] up two years ago, we wouldn’t be able to put it there now.”

“I’ve been involved in bird banding since 2000,” said Waud, “banding was new to me, but the interest [in the environment] wasn’t new. I would say that my interest probably began when I was a child.” RITBO was set up by the initiative of both professors. “About three years ago,” said Mathiason, “I got interested in bird banding, I was looking at the hawks, and then when John found out I was moving towards banding, he diverted me towards songbirds.”

It is at RITBO that Waud, Mathiason and their group of students and volunteers band birds.

Voila! La Procédure!

To be banded, a bird must first be caught. There are several ways of catching birds. As only songbirds are banded at RITBO, these are usually caught in “mist nets”—thin, light nets strung up between tress—put up by the banders. They regularly check the nets and extract caught birds (easier said than done; expert bander and instructor Betsy Brooks of the Braddock Bay Bird Observatory (BBBO) once detailed how grown men have been known to cry in despair when trying to extract a difficult bird completely entangled in the net, its feathers and tongue caught and knotted). The birds are carried in soft cotton bags and “processed,” i.e. data about them is collected after banding. Processing a bird may involve some or many of a variety of things. Its species is noted, and an appropriate band size is chosen.

Once banded, (if it’s not an already-banded bird, what banders call a “re-cap”) its wing chord—the un-flattened length from wing joint to the tip of the longest primary wing feather—is measured. Its tarsus (leg) is also measured. Age and sex are determined by indicators such as plumage. Its beak or bill may also be measured. A jet of air is directed at its neck hollow via a plastic straw, and fat deposits are gauged on a scale of 0 to 5. Finally, it is weighed, usually in an empty cardboard Minute Maid cylinder, and set free.

Objections to banding:

Some people object to banding based on what they perceive as cruelty to the birds. Indeed, the first rule of the Bander’s Code of Ethics states: “Handle each bird carefully, gently, quietly, with respect and in minimum time,” to minimize any trauma to the bird. “The first priority is the safety of the bird,” affirmed Waud, “and the second priority is the integrity of the data, because if the information we collect isn’t right, then it’s not going to help conservation. In that order: the bird first, and the data second.”

Dr. David Mathiason holds a yellow warbler after banding it as part of a research project.
Dave Londres

Mathiason said those who believed banding was cruel had a short-term view: “They don’t realize that the research that’s being done is for the long-term continuance of the species. There are plenty of examples; [American Bald] Eagles were nearly extinct, then people paid attention to the declining numbers to figure out why, and now they’re on the rebound! So you try to tell people why you’re banding.”

...And Why is That?

As ornithologists are able to track banded birds, their “stopovers” during migration can be determined. A bird banded in RITBO could show up in a banding station elsewhere, where they will read its band, and enter it as a “re-cap” in the huge database of banded birds. Here’s an absolutely amazing example: the Yellow Warbler (see photo on page 17) caught on Wednesday, April 30, 2008, was first banded at RITBO on May 7, 2004. It was aged as a “second year” bird at that time based on how it looked, which means it is now five years old, and has returned here.

But in fast urbanizing landscapes, birds’ migratory stopovers are often replaced by the newest mall or parking lot, depriving our feathered friends of the nourishment and rest they need during migration. About 95% of mortality in birds occurs during migration. The survivors will only decrease if humans continue to disregard the birds’ needs. What conservation agencies try to determine are which areas the birds need as stopovers in migratory routes. “Every piece of wood that you see serves as a stopover site,” explained Mathiason, “so what we’re trying to do with the Nature Conservancy is to identify what are the characteristics that make an area good. We can’t look at a site, necessarily, and say how good it is. Our knowledge is very basic, we just don’t know. There’s a lot of research to be done to identify good stopover sites.”

Waud elaborated, “And that is the importance of it. We’re talking about unimaginable amounts of money that could be spent buying lands [to conserve]. There just isn’t that much money available. For an organization like Nature Conservancy, the question is, If there’s a limited amount of money, where should they direct it? How to spend limited resources to do the most good? So we do enjoy what we’re doing, but it ’s certainly not to make us feel good.”

Agreed Kelli Fagan, second year Biology major, “The data collected from banding is extremely important to ornithology. The information has lead to a better understanding of migrations, productivity, behavior, and disease amongst birds. It’s also tons of fun. I know waking up before dawn doesn’t sound very appealing to most people, but it’s worth it.”

Of Challenges Past and the Future of RITBO

“Certainly, at a faculty level, we had to convince some other faculty that what we were doing was worthwhile,” mentioned Waud, “because it’s a very different course than most of what RIT teaches.” RIT offers two courses: Adventures in Ornithology and Bird Banding. “The other challenge is that most students at RIT don’t know that we have these courses. The people who might take it don’t even know it exists,” Waud said. “...And they don’t know that we’re doing banding right on campus,” finished Mathiason.

Banders wait for birds to get caught in the nets.
Dave Londres

On potential effects that the construction of Park Point will have, Waud and Mathiason explained that Park Point has resulted in a new mitigation land near RITBO, essentially to restore the acreage of wetlands lost due to Park Point. “So that’s given rise to another research project, to see what that impact is,” said Mathiason, “but it’s too early to know. This the first season we’ve been banding [since Park Point]. Over the next few years, we can assess the impact... It’s not obvious yet, you’ll never know, would they have been better off the way they were, because we were not doing banding over there, and we can’t now.”

Said Waud, “My sense is that over the period of years, it could be a positive thing for the area around the banding site and the mitigation site, but in the short haul, it’s not clear if that’s going to be the case, because we’ve shifted the deer herd all around, and that affects the birds’ willingness to use the area, when the deer graze.”

Continued Waud, “The other thing that would come to mind is that RIT... is trying to increase building density rather than spread out any further. I would really like to see a couple of things happen. I’d like to see a grassland area created beyond the wetland. I think that’s very feasible. Right now, that land is rented to a farmer, and I don’t know how long she or he will be farming.”

The revenue from the farmer’s rent could hardly be significant to RIT’s total budget. If that natural area could be contributed to the conservation easement (which is a legally binding contract that the land will be left undeveloped), RIT would really be helping in conservation and restoring the land to a functional ecosystem.