Methow Valley Bird Banding Update – 12 July 2021

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Beginner Bird Banding Class, June 2021. Photo by Jackie Hovis.

The 2021 Methow Valley banding season has been very busy.  It started in early June when I hosted a five-day beginner bird banding class.  The class was supported by NCWAS and taught by Danielle Kaschube.  Danielle works for the Institute for Bird Populations and coordinates their MAPS (Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship) banding program.  (You can learn more about the MAPS program by visiting the Institute for Bird Populations’ web site.)

Morning banding session. Photo by Julie Hovis

The class was fast-paced and covered a lot of material, which made for some very long days! Starting at sunrise the students spent several hours mist netting and banding captured birds. Skills taught during the morning banding sessions included the operation of mist nets and safe extraction of birds, bird-handling skills, and in-hand ageing and sexing techniques. In the afternoon they attended classroom lectures where the topics of banding ethics, the permitting process, and avian plumages and molt strategies were discussed. By all accounts the class was a success.  Everyone (including me!) learned a lot, and the students have been applying what they learned by volunteering at my MAPS station.

Learning to band and process birds. Photo by Julie Hovis.

To date, four of the seven required MAPS sessions have been completed and 54 birds representing 21 different species have been captured.  One of the goals of the MAPS program is to determine survival rates, so it is both exciting and informative when we recapture a bird that was banded in a previous year. So far this year we have recaptured five birds originally banded in 2019 (the year the station was started): one Warbling Vireo, two Swainson’s Thrush, one MacGillivray’s Warbler, and one Yellow Warbler.

Swainson’s Thrush photo by Jackie Hovis. All other photos by Julie Hovis.

All of these birds are Neotropical migrants. I can’t say exactly where they migrated to each winter, but range maps and e-Bird records show their nonbreeding ranges include Central America. Hypothetically speaking, if they migrated as far south as Costa Rica, these birds have made the one-way trip of ±3,600 miles between their winter and breeding grounds at least five times. That is beyond amazing!